1. I have been in the managerial role for too long that my IC output is subpar
2. I made some bad technical/hiring decisions that led to tech debt
3. I cant keep up with the pace and stress.
This is not imposter syndrome. I genuinely think I am not measuring up and holding my friends back.
I think if I can quit to take a year off to recharge and hone my skill, I feel confident that I can go at it again either 1) bootstrap 2) raise a smaller round at a more reasonable valuation. But obviously this will raise all kinds of negative signals if I ever try to raise funding or building a team.
I don't really know what help or advice I am asking for here. So any input would be appreciated. Did anyone go through a similar path?
I had done a similar thing but I'd put up most of the money, at least for the equipment, but upon seeing the work ethic of my other business partners, I am no longer interested in even being partners anymore. It's more of a "put your money where your mouth is" situation as it was supposed to be a division of everyone working together, but ended up that I essentially provided everything for everyone, and that was not the way I wanted it to go at all.
For me personally, however, I've got to just cut my losses and sell off whatever equipment I bought. There was no legal contracts or anything in place.
Did you agree to a certain 3-way profit if any? If so, then just have them buy you out. Depending on the time and work you've already put into the company, as well as the ideas, probably just name your price, draw up the legal contracts, so that you are ultimately settling on a buyout price.
1. Talk to your co founders if not already about this and see what they have to say
2. Take a break for couple of weeks before deciding anything.
"raise a smaller round at a more reasonable valuation"
This makes me think that you guys raised too much (not that uncommon in 2021-early 2022) and the pressure to grow is lot more than you thought. Regardless, even if you raise at more "reasonable" valuations, the pace and stress expected from a VC backed company is always high. Very high.
If you truly cannot keep up with the pace and stress in general (not just this startup), you perhaps need to revisit the idea of building a company especially the VC way. May be start bootstrapped first ? Just a thought.
I think you should take a moment to breathe, talk to your cofounders about your feelings, and try to work through this. It’s hard, but you can do it.
What you say can be true, but they might want you to stick around anyway. And so they might come up with ideas/solutions to these problems.
The other thing to remember is that mistakes and wrong steps are unavoidable. And they increase in size and frequency the less there's a common process or roadmap for what you're trying to do.
By definition, startups are at the extreme on this scale.