I'm feeling broken as an entrepreneurship
"What am I doing wrong? - is my daily, as shitty as it sounds, mantra to myself...
30M, in the UK here, been out of the corporate word for around 6 years. Worked at one start up NFT company which was pretty cool, lasted around 2/3 years before running out of cashflow. And now I've co-founded (literally pretty much in inception and ideation phase) with my current nature/biodiversity tech start-up for the past 3 years.
My background is in fashion buying, so I don't have direct experience in the space I'm in but one of my co-founders has got years in the space of ESG and advisory for companies and government, my other co-founder is a monster (in the best of senses), he's had a successful business years ago, and has done deals in the energy sector and now both of them are co-founding this with me. P.S. they're alot older than my self and alot more knowledgeable, they're a bloody great team.
I started this pursuit out on the whim. I love nature (I know that isn't the best or valid reason to pursue a start up) and my co-founder proposed this problem in the space for businesses not understanding how they depend on nature (some need to know because of laws/regs/legislation and some genuinely want to have more sustainable and nature-uplifting operations). So then we embarked. We started the idea ages ago for it to be a B2C app (allow people to plant trees, offset, take pictures of restoration projects around them, the citizen science bit of it) but we then pivoted to a B2B offering, more aligned to what I've expressed above, we got some angel investment a year and a half ago and thought okay, let's hire some tech people (as we're decent vibe coders but we wanted to build something better) but we essentially went through trial by fire, all of the tech companies didn't align with us, we didn't get what we wanted and it was just a waste of time, we also tried to hire out a BDM to see if that person could be the person to go out to market to get corporates on-board with the vision, basically being the person that obtains our "problem-market fit" through corporate conversations + potential contract LOI to say "if you get this product developed", we'll pay for it - that was unsuccessful too. So, we're now at this point where there's 3 of us, we've built a rough low-code prototype using open-source datasets from environmental sources (WWF etc). It’s not perfect or fully polished but shows the direction of travel. We’ve also had a corporate say they would use the platform, so it’s not like there is zero validation.
But if I'm honest, it hasn’t really caught on in the way we hoped.
Investor traction has been hard. The feedback/sentiment we keep coming up against is whether we're the right team to build this especially because our backgrounds aren’t deeply scientific or environmental (it's rather implied than mentioned directly). They feel they already have something aligned to this in their portfolio, too early etc etc...
The angel money is now depleted.
And my personal finances are at the edge. I’m down to the last few hundred pounds, rent and bills are due, and for the past few months I’ve had to borrow money from family to keep going. My co-founders are supportive and still believe in what we’re doing but they’re also under pressure (I won’t speak on their personal situation but they’re sitting comfortably either.)
And I'm totally burnt out (I feel like I've ran a marathon constantly)... I feel like I’ve been trying to keep the thing alive through sheer hope and the idea that maybe one more conversation, one more investor, one more bit of feedback, one more serendipitous moment might make it click.
But I’m at the point where I’m constantly stressed, my mood is all over the place and I don’t feel like myself. I’ve always been driven, positive and pragmatic. This is probably the first time in my life where I genuinely feel like I don’t know what the next right move is.
I’ve been thinking about getting a part-time job or potentially approaching fashion tech startups as its closer to my background so maybe there’s a way to contribute to an early-stage company in that space (that's even if I'm able to find a job...)
But I’m worried that taking a job means I’m giving up.
I’m also worried that if I take a job, I’ll lose the focus needed to build this company. But equally, if I don’t take a job, I’m not sure how much longer I can keep operating like this. I'm confused. Like really confused. And talk to this at this stage of the company. We haven't even passed the start line even by the grace of nature we get some investment. We still need to build out the entire platform build up the business keep going with it and I genuinely don't feel I have the passion or strength for it. I'm not sure if it's my burnout talking right now or if it's a genuinely me not feeling attached to the start-up.
P.S I live in a small town, so opportunities are basically 0 here to align with startups in the area, so I'll have to look at bigger cities to see what's going on there.
I’d appreciate honest advice, words of encouragement or any likeness to the journey. It doesn’t need to be sugar-coated but I could also do with some realism.
I’m trying to make the most practical decision...