HACKER Q&A
📣 wxce

Advice for 24 Y.O. founders afraid of repercussions if startup fails?


Hi HN,

My co-founder and I have been working on a startup since the last 12-13 months or so.

It's a social media that caters to a niche and we think it will work.

We've built the MVP, and we have a certain amount of signups with minimal marketing costs. We think there is a market fit here.

To scale up, we've been thinking of starting to approach funds for a seed round.

At the same time, we're thinking of the future -- if/when we get funding, we will have to quit our jobs.

We're 24 right now.

We were discussing all of the possible outcomes that might occur. A couple of scenarios:

Scenario 1: Our product really flies to millions as we are expecting it to, and we make a decent amount of money through Series B, Series C rounds etc.

Scenario 2: Our product shows decent promise during seed stages etc, we raise money through two rounds but then the startup dies for some reason.

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For the second scenario, we'll be 28.

We will probably have made no savings through the four years, and will be behind our peers in terms of professional growth and monetary savings.

28 also happens to be the age when most people get married. It seems like not a great idea to not have a good financial cushion at this age.

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Both of us are decently smart I think, and if things end with scenario 2, it simply won't be great. We'll be so behind people our age in terms of money saved etc.

This post does focus on the monetary aspect of the process, even though building something of your own will be super fun. How would you approach this predicament?


  👤 elliewithcolor Accepted Answer ✓
I’m 27. Just to give it a reference frame.

My company failed. Worked on it 6 years and ended in a burnout. Thing is I can say I tried. And now I have another few years (like atleast 40 I hope^^) to do something else. Failing early isn’t the Ende. You did atleast try if you fail.