Ryan Rutan: and we are back for another episode of the startup therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan joined as ever by my partner and the founder and Ceo of startup, stop calm Wil Schroder, well, we're going to talk about something today that, uh, that, that seems to be a pretty common theme amongst amongst those of us who make it to the end of this race, uh, this marathon that we, we call startups. And I know that you've had a couple conversations over the last few weeks. Um, that have been exactly around this point. This point at which we're so exhausted. Um, staring at a sale of the company potentially and we just are like so gas that we don't know what to do with ourselves. Um, you want to

Wil Schroter: walk through a couple of conversations? Yeah. And we have them a fair amount. Like we'd actually like to have them a fair amount because often they're ending something positive. But you know, since what we're talking about is what happens at the end of this journey and we're not talking about after, you know, we sell or after we shut it down. We're talking right before we do when we are at the one yard line at the goal line, I should say of exactly where this deal is going to end and we are exhausted, right? We are financially exhausted. We are mentally exhausted emotionally. I mean there's nothing left to be exhausted. We've spent

Ryan Rutan: at all. We

Wil Schroter: left it all on the field.

Ryan Rutan: It's funny because I think

Wil Schroter: a lot of people, you know, founders early in our careers or those that are just starting our thinking that at the end, like before a sale that we're just high fiving each other, right? That the entire time we're just like, oh my God, I can't believe how well things are going and I don't think people realize that toward the end you are crawling, there is nothing left in that tank. And I think the challenge with that is you're crawling through easily the most important negotiation of your life. If there was ever a time to be fully focused, fully jacked up for what this conversation was about to be, you are not there, this is not the time to be gassed. So I think what we should talk about today, I think we should talk about uh, where do people, you know, when they, when they start to get into this spot and I'm going to say whether it's an acquisition or a wind down because they both have similar attributes were both pretty cashed in both cases. I think we should talk a little bit about uh, what are the consequences of being completely burnt out at this stage? I think we should talk a little bit about, um, how important this moment is and how careless we tend to get with it because I see it all the time and I'll talk about some instances. Um, and I also think about what do we need to do in order to kind of like just pull off whatever is left of reserve energy, if any exists whatsoever and how we kind of channel what we need to get through this now, what I saw and what you're referencing to were to startups, this is within the past few weeks. In both cases, these were eight figure deals. Now one was an eight figure deal, which it was a sale, the other was an eight figure deal where it was a wind down and when I said eight figure wind down, I mean they had raised eight figures and they were winding it down both stressful as hell, both almost identical identical timelines of roughly a decade, which is like 100 years in startup, founder years. And and so in both cases, the founders were cashed out, I mean mentally cashed out you, no one will be financially cashed out, but but they were so done with it, both were just saying, will I need to just be out of this thing, like just get me out. And I think for founders that have been toying with this, or founders that are burnt out, this is the moment where they're about to make some of the biggest mistakes they're ever going to make. You know what I mean? Alright, so before we get into this next topic, I just want to let you know what we talk about here is like 1% of the conversation, you know, really, this conversation is going on all day long online at groups dot startups dot com. Where Ryan and I pretty much talk endlessly with founders about every one of these topics. So if by the end of this discussion, you like the topic and you want to dig into it a little bit more with Ryan and I just had two groups startups dot com and we'll pick it up from there.

Ryan Rutan: Yeah. You know, it's and it's it's so tough because again, at that point in time you

Wil Schroter: just, you're so

Ryan Rutan: close to the end. And I think that's actually part of the problem, Right? Is that because you can see the end in sight, the defenses start to come down, the fatigue starts to set in, right? It's the round 12 mentality, it's the last two minutes of the game. Like you, your body knows your mind knows every bit of your soul knows one way or the other. This is about to stop. And I think that's where we can start to melt into, into some level of complacency. And, and that's extremely hard, right? And it's hard to avoid. Um, but look on the other hand, we've, we've sort of built careers around this, right? Like this isn't the first time we've run out of energy and a startup certain, right? It happens over and over and over again. And I think something that I just want to point out is that because that endpoint is so close, It makes it forgivable. Excusable. We give ourselves permission to say, I've been running this whole time, I'm just going to slow down now. And that's okay. And it's not, it is absolutely not okay. Uh well you brought this up a couple episodes ago, uh, where we talked about the fact that like this is the moment like this these final negotiations. This is where we need to make sure we're not leaving money on the table, right? We were talking about in the context of people thinking like, well, I'm just gonna do another one and another one and another

Wil Schroter: one may

Ryan Rutan: Be right. And and and maybe you'll you'll you'll you'll have the energy at the end of the 2nd 1. I don't know why because you're you're gonna be older and you're gonna have gone through this. More likelihood is you'll have less energy. But I think that's a really important piece of this, is that, you know, we we hearken back to that discussion. The other one. The other, the other analog, I want to draw here is another great point that you brought up, which was around startup equity. And that being one of the most expensive currencies that we can spend, right? And as founders, you know, we do everything, we can ideally to defend all of that equity at the very beginning, right? And and were were adamant almost militant about that at some points about trying to get as few points as possible when you're raised right. You know, keeping the the, the the the options pool small holding on to as much as we can. So those were diluted over time that we maintain as much of that as we can. And

Wil Schroter: that's the right thing to do.

Ryan Rutan: And now imagine after having done all of that and gone through the pain of maintaining that equity and being careful about spending that most expensive currency that exists within the startup because as you said, it represents 100% of the future value of the company. And now here you are in the last mile and you're gonna take less than you should and less than you shouldn't, less than you shouldn't listen should simply because you're tired. Don't let that happen, right? That is the biggest tragedy. The biggest travesty that can possibly exist in startup them is that you've done all the right things, you've fought all the battles, You've picked yourself up off the floor and you decided to keep running and then you get to the end and you're like,

Wil Schroter: you know what?

Ryan Rutan: Third place is probably pretty cool. I like bronze, right? It's a nice color. Like let's let's just slow down a little right here at the very end.

Wil Schroter: Well, you know, I always equate it to running a marathon. You know, picture insane marathon or Ironman triathlon type marathon. And I picture you've, you've competed, you've trained you you've gotten ready for this whole thing, you're in it. Maybe you're doing? Well, maybe you're not kind of doesn't matter because you definitely want to finish, you were 100 ft from the finish line. And to your point, Ryan, you start thinking, you know, I'm just tired. I think I'm just gonna like crash out here and call it a day. What was the point of everything? You just went through 100 ft from the finish line. You're determining that it's, it's time to just lay down and call it a day, right? But from the founders standpoint, you know, to, to, to, to put this back in their court for all of us. By this point, we just want to be done with it all. We're thinking is how painful life is, right? It's really hard for us to zoom out and have good context for where we are in the life cycle of this thing. Like we know it's sort of at the end, but we want the pain to stop again. We're 100 ft from the finish line and we just feel aches in every part of our body. And someone is about to say, you know what? If you'll take third place and not first place, we're willing to stop the race here and you're like, I want the race to stop more than I care about first to third place. That's it. That's exactly

Ryan Rutan: it, right? So, so what, what can we do in these moments? Like what short of Hiring a piano player to follow us around and, and just keep chariots of fire running 24 hours a day from the time we start to feel tired until we're actually done. Like what are some of the things that we can draw on in these moments when it's just like, I just want to be done. How do we change that mindset? Why should we change that mindset?

Wil Schroter: Well, I think, uh, you know, when I was coaching a couple of founders and talking through this and founder groups with the group, one of the things that, that, you know, we started to really pick up on the thematically was this is such a unique opportunity to ever even get to this point and, and, and I want to, I want to come back for a second to say there were two instances here, one that was going well, one that was going poorly for the one that was going poorly. What we explained there, What we talked about in depth was however you finish this thing, how you leave is how this thing is going to be remembered. So if you're saying, well I'm wrapping it up so funk all these people, you know, I'm just going to go out guns blazing. The worst possible outcome, Right? Yes. Your fried. Yes, your pissed, you're all these things, but this very moment, this last 100 ft or whatever it is is how you're going to be remembered, right? And so you don't have the luxury as much as we'd love to have it of just saying, fuck it. You know, I'm just gonna try to get out of this thing because everything you're about to do, every decision you're about to make has lifetime consequences. All those investors, you're about to leave hanging, have lifetime consequences, the staff that you're about to leave hanging, all these loose ends, your reputation, all of this is going to culminate and well, it'll probably be the next month week, whatever year of your life. And to say, I'm too tired to deal with it. Of course, you're too tired to deal with it. There's no question we're not pushing back on the two tired part whatsoever. I just want to be done with it. Of course you just want to be done with it because it's terrible. But the, the point here is you can't, you don't have that luxury right now. Right? This isn't the time where you being too tired is okay, right? This is a time where you being too tired has a massive cost. Maybe more cost than anything leading up to this moment. And I think that's the, that's the part we start to kind of have to wrap our heads around is how important the energy of this moment is.

Ryan Rutan: So I'm just gonna take a stab here, man. But I'm assuming that in these conversations, one of the things that came up and and one of the factors that you and I would both agree is extremely, extremely important is to be surrounded by other founders in these moments, because I don't think that there's anybody else on the planet who is going to be able to give you the perspective and the empathy that will help to reignite that fire and keep you moving. Other people can give you the perspective. They can go like, look, man, you're going to leave money on the table. Um, this is not going to be the outcome you wanted. If you don't see this further through and you're going to go Fuck you man, you have no idea what I've been doing for the last 10 years, right? Whereas another founder is going to be like, yeah, actually I do right, I'm near the same spot or I'm headed to the same spot. I get it, man, I've been there, I'm doing what you're doing and, and it's awful and it's tiring. But this is not the time, right? So I feel like at a bare minimum, This is one of the factors that's going to make a huge difference between you just deciding to stop with 100 m to go and or to continue through at pace and really bull your way through and get the outcome that you've earned, that you've invested in For this 7-100 years, however long this has taken you. Um, so at a minimum make sure you're surrounded by founders, like what else is there? Well, like in your mind, like what else do we do to to re motivate ourselves to find that, that, that extra little bit of juice to keep moving

Wil Schroter: here. Here's what I would do. I would put a giant wall sized poster post it note on my wall in my office and and write the words, This is my last shot. Yeah,

Ryan Rutan: yeah. Oh man. Great point

Wil Schroter: in case there was no misunderstanding that no matter how tired you are, this is your last shot. And, and, and let's, let's build on that for a little bit because I think this encompasses so many things. I think part of the expectation when I'm going through this, hey, I just want to get out of this is that you're going to get another opportunity to make up for how vulnerable you are right now. This is a shooting deal. That's okay. You know, you'll do another startup, you'll raise some more money and you'll do it again. Probably not just to be clear. Yes, You can start something else. That probability just statistically, I don't care who you are, that you're going to get back to this point again is damn near zero. Now, the shitty thing is we don't believe that we don't, we're all tom

Ryan Rutan: brady. I

Wil Schroter: get to play in every

Ryan Rutan: Super Bowl ever for the rest of time and I keep winning them, right? That's just not the way it works,

Wil Schroter: it's not the way it works. And so the part of what folks don't realize, especially if they're early in their careers. If I'm 34 years old and I'm negotiating my exit, here's what I'm thinking. Well this happened pretty fast even if I've been at it for 10 years, which is a ridiculously long time And I've got another 40 years to go in my career, I'll clearly do this again, wrong, you might do this again. And statistically you probably won't. So if you're not treating your 34 year old moment as the single most important negotiating moment of your life, you'll spend the rest of your career statistically regretting not treating this moment as the single most important moment of your life. And so here's what you and probably

Ryan Rutan: burning a lot of the resources that you gain from the single most important negotiation life trying to recreate it right? Like just chasing and chasing and chasing to no end, right? We see this happen

Wil Schroter: all the time. You can start a million companies. That part's easy. Anyone can start a company. Our Children have started companies, right? It's pretty easy to do. Getting to this moment where you have an opportunity to get out of it, even if it's not the best exit you ever had, etcetera is almost damn near impossible. It's part of the startup lure that people don't talk about. And so when we're in our founder groups and you said you had a great point of, you know, surrounding yourself by founders, whether in a group or otherwise, um, is that you need somebody to bring you back to reality. You need somebody to remind you how special this moment is and how this is kind of sort of maybe likely your last shot at it. Yeah. And so it looked at in that lens, If I say, look, I'm, I'm negotiating my exit right? And we're going to sell the company safe for $50 million, which is a ton of money in, depending on where you are in the capital stack and you know, how much is coming to you could be life changing or not, but let's say that it is right and let's say that you're selling for 50 and when the deal is done, you're going to take 10 off the table. Pretty common actually. Ah and you're looking at it going well, you know, they're saying 50 but now they're saying 40 and you know, I'll take a little bit less. So I just want to get this thing done, you know, whatever or they're saying 50 but it's, it's 15 upfront and the rest is on an earn out. So you know what, let's just whatever, just get it done. It's money, I'm just glad to be out of this thing, right, wrong, answer, wrong answer. And this isn't to say to be a hard pass and be unreasonable in your negotiation. It's to treat the negotiation every time like it's your absolute last, you know, by the way, I just want to mention if what we're talking about today sounds like the kind of discussion you wish you were having more often. You actually can, you know, we're online all day everyday working through exactly these types of

Ryan Rutan: topics with founders,

Wil Schroter: just like you. So any question you would have, or maybe some problem you just want to work through. We're here and we love this stuff and we're easy to find, you know, head over to groups dot startups dot com and let's just start talking 100%. Well, I

Ryan Rutan: think that this comes down to a notion that we've discussed before and it happens at various points in founders life, which is we find ourselves very, very vulnerable. Um the difference with the vulnerability that's occurring at this stage is that there isn't really a chance to recover from it after the fact right? There are other times in our in our career as a founder where we're vulnerable. We make decisions based on pressure. We do things that were maybe counter to our own health or the success of the business, right? And we have a chance to to make up for that. All right, for some some compensation against that. Now there is no overtime here. Once we call this game. Once we finish this negotiation and I'll bring back some of the examples that you brought up. You know, we we we take a lower valuation than we wanted. Um We we get pushed further down in the capital stack that we wanted for some reason. Um it's a partial payment that we may never see. The rest of. It's an earn out doing something we absolutely don't want to do with people that we may not want to do it with. And all of a sudden the face of this entire thing turns into something completely different than what we've aspired to build. We talked about this in terms of like what happens when you sell your company and and and the pain and discomfort that you can go through in those moments. But you now find yourself in a situation where you're going to be doing things counter to all that freedom that you've tried to construct for yourself and this beautiful dream of your startup and at a moment where it should be a celebration and it's not purely because you're out of energy and and you're vulnerable. Well like how often do you see this the case where it's just like it's that pure vulnerability and the number of decisions and the number of points of attack that are kind of coming at you that just leave you open to making the wrong choices.

Wil Schroter: What what's what's crazy though is it happens in a fairly short period of time, weeks months relative to all the time. You just invested, right? You know, we keep using this marathon analogy, but like it's it's you know, 60 seconds of running left to do compared to like weeks upon months of of training that you did to get to get to this point. And so I think work. It's particularly challenging is if we kind of just fall apart at the last moment in all of this, it also kind of negates all of the sacrifices we made to get here, right? Just think of the amount of time invested in our lives just to get to this moment to this final moment. This opportunity to even have this negotiation and here we are at this pent ultimate moment and we're becoming cavalier about how to finish it, right? It's not okay all those sacrifices we made all the people we committed to everything around it. It's not okay for us to take this position. And like we said before, because we only have one shot at it, the geometric outcome for the rest of our lives. For all the people that are affected by this can't be understated. This is their one shot at all of this. It's not just about how tired we are, it's about our fundamental responsibility to every single person on the cap table to be able to see this through with with full energy with full spirit. Not easy by the way, again, we'll keep coming back to this if you're saying, but I am so tired, It's like you are you are beat this. There's no time for concessions right now because we're tired. That's what I'm saying. Yeah,

Ryan Rutan: it's interesting because you know, you talked about all of the sacrifices, all of the investments, all of the foregone happiness and deferred

Wil Schroter: life that we've gone

Ryan Rutan: through to get to this moment, which you would think would would would galvanize you write and strengthen you. Um, and yet it just doesn't seem to write, you look back at those things and to some degree kind of being able to go back in time. And remembering myself at the same point, it actually added to my and used the word cavalier here and I would say if it was, if it's cavalier, it's it's a it's a facade of being of having a cavalier attitude. It's it's, I would use the word almost like neglectful, right? It's it's we're going to neglect to do the things that we do because I don't see many founders. I don't see it as cavalier to me is like, you know what fun it I'll just take what I get, I worked hard. This is good enough for me, right? It's right. I just can't anymore. I just, you know what the deal will be, what the deal is. I get what I get,

Wil Schroter: right. Not I came took what I

Ryan Rutan: deserved. It's I'm just gonna take what I can get and I think part of that comes from all of those investments because you start to revisit that 100%. You start to go back in time and think about all those moments and individually they were manageable, right? They were micro sprints within the marathon that you could do. But when you start to think of them collectively, holy sh it can that sap the energy from you, because you start to think about if I don't do this now, does that mean that I'm signing up to do more of that? Does that mean that I'm gonna have to redo all of this again? Because you don't know very much like this may be your one shot to negotiate. It may be that in the absolute sense there may not be another offer that comes along and not just the next business, but like you may not have another opportunity to sell. So you better make the most of this,

Wil Schroter: which puts you

Ryan Rutan: in this really high high pressure situation where you have to decide do I push and risk it or do I fold and take what's offered. And and the reality is it's, it's somewhere in the middle of that right? We don't want to see founders leaving money on the table. Um, but to your point, you don't want to push so hard that you break the deal either necessarily because there is no certainty of another deal, inasmuch as there's no certainty of a 2nd 3rd or fourth startup success. There may not be another offer. And that puts you in this, your word, vulnerable in this incredibly vulnerable state around not knowing which outcome to optimize for the size of the, of the finish. The certainty the just to get to the end. Um, and even how to do that with some level of control and dignity,

Wil Schroter: Ryan, we keep talking about uh being at the goal line, okay, as the last mile being on the goal line and being fried in how expensive that is. You know, monetarily and everything else in our lives. I want to present a different scenario that's actually gonna apply to far more people. I'm not at the goal line and that's the problem. I'm just fucking tired. I'm just X amount of years in, you know, your mileage may vary. And man, I'm just tired. I'm at a point Where I run this thing, I'm gonna make a number seven years and I'm gassed, right? I've run this thing 12 years and I'm gassed. This has nothing to do with not negotiating my exit. This has nothing to do with, you know, wrapping things. I am so tired. I don't even know like how to just keep it going to everyone get to that point. And I think that's a really common scenario, but but the reason I bring it up, it applies to more people, but it's actually the same problem just repackaged it is it

Ryan Rutan: is it's it's the same problem with a slightly different outcome.

Wil Schroter: Absolutely. At which point you've got in the business this far along. You're just kind of further in the marathon in our earlier analogy, um, when you've got the business this far along and you are tired, you are once again at a vulnerable state. Everything that you that it took to get it here if you quit. Now, if you give up, if you're too tired, then what essentially happens is you're negating all the work that you just put in to get here and all the same things apply right? All the people that, that you are uncovered by, you know, investors, employees, all those people that are saying, hey, you know, we're kind of expecting something, but you're too tired to carry it anymore. Same issue. Same vulnerability, Right? But it's also theoretically the last mile. It's just a bit of a longer mile than, you know, and it's a harder mile because you can't see the finish line. You don't even know if there is one. And look, I mean, wherever we are in this process, right, You know, we're still in the same challenge because were gassed. And I think what we should finally talk about is, let's talk about when we're at that point, when we've got nothing left, right? When we were just again, gas as it can be. What do we do about it? Right. You know, we talked about bringing founders around it? I think we should talk a little bit about how do we get in the right headspace also. What are some options? What we can do for ourselves? You know, physically if you will, um, to actually, uh, to get around this because I think what we tend to forget is I'm gassed and therefore I just feel this bad. I think what we need to talk about is I'm gassed. This issue is important and here's what I'm about to do about it.

Ryan Rutan: Yeah, yeah. And you look, we've, we've talked about various things that, that you can do to make sure that you as the founder are as fit mentally, physically emotionally, um, as as possible to be able to deal with these challenges. We've talked about this in a couple other podcasts. Um, but but to go back to some of the important things, one is recognizing that like burnout is coming and doing something about it, right? That, that this exhaustion, it's part of it. Right? There's no version of running a startup. That's just like, you know, from day one, I just set this thing up. I had this whole army of via, it was just, it's just been perfect. I, you know, I'm here a couple hours a day. It's just everything I ever wanted. Okay. No, it's not what it looks like, right? There are a lot of periods of grind. I think that one of things we have to be really careful of is a understanding where that point is and and you and I have both been very honest about this. It took us years and multiple times of doing this to ourselves before we realized what that burnout point was and could go, woo hoo, I need to slow down and or one of the other of us saying, hey buddy, I'm seeing a collapse coming, man, you're, you're running yourself too thin here, you're running yourself ragged. Let's take a, let's take a breather and let's talk about priorities right now and what really, really needs to get done. And this is where I think that especially when you're up against some really significant challenges and you're not finding your path through it right. There's a difference between doing work and knowing if the work that you're doing is having any fucking impact whatsoever, right? That can be exhausting, right? If you show up for work every day and you keep shoveling at the same pile and there is no perceptible change in the pile that gets extremely tiring. Now one would question why we would keep doing that. And yet as founders, we often find ourselves in that position where we just keep trying to chip away at the same thing that isn't having the right impact again, like having a group of founders around you who can help give you that perspective and say, hey, lean back a bit here, like you're running up against what you feel like as a wall that's actually a column step around like, but it can be really, really hard to see. Um, and we're not always clear on exactly what's exhausting us. Um, but being in a position where you, you are aware that there is a real cost to that, that the marathon analogy, you know, is a good one, right? Because it, it does speak to the, the amount of energy that gets consumed where it breaks down a little bit, is that in a marathon you typically don't stop right in this race? Sometimes you have to maybe just for a minute, right? Let the muscles recover and then take off again, let the muscles recover and get some perspective on what it is you're actually trying to accomplish and whether that's the most important next step that you need to take and allow yourself that space, which can be really hard because you feel like if I don't keep running, I don't get to the finish line and yet time and time again will you? And I have seen people who ran so hard that they didn't get to the finish line right? They were stopped prematurely because they burned themselves out. They exhausted themselves, They caused physical damage, emotional damage. Um, and, and you know, that's hard to recover from, or sometimes impossible and it just causes you to need to fold the tents and go home simply because you push too much too soon. Now knowing when and where these points are. I require sage like wisdom, um, which most of us don't possess. And that's why it's good to have founder friends, right? It's good to have people around you who can collectively go, hmm, something seems off here, man. Maybe just, you know what you're doing here a little bit Ryan. Maybe think about what you're chasing. Maybe think about the pace of what you're chasing it. And I think that's all super valuable

Wil Schroter: feedback.

Ryan Rutan: Um, outside of that. You know, just take lots of supplements, drink lots of caffeine and just fuckingo right? I don't have other advice for that one.

Wil Schroter: I, I think you touched on something though, Find someone or some ones that you can be accountable to the right people that aren't you that can give you some damn perspective as to what's actually happening. For example, when I was talking to those two founders, right, That was my job. My job was to step in and provide some accountability to be able to say, look what you're about to do. The decision you're about to make. Is it your best decision? No, I'm tired. Okay, let's zoom out a little bit and let's revisit this thing. The worst thing we can do as you said, Ryan is to be stuck in our own heads. The second worst thing we can do is to keep all the accountability internal to us, right? Because the other everyone else's burnt out to and or they have a strong, strong agenda for why they just want to get this over with. I'm talking about investors, your advisory board, etcetera. They have a very different take on it. They're not necessarily concerned with what's best for you. They're concerned with what's best for them as they should be. So one of the important steps is to bring in some trusted folks who can just say, you know, you might want to double you double check that that may not be accurate. You know, that the assumption you're making or the step you're about to take, the worst you can do is go through this process alone because it will guarantee the worst possible outcome. Now folks may come to you and I Ryan and they may say, hey, can you kind of help me through this and walk me through this and we've got a ton of experience and you may not agree with with what we suggest we have. We don't make, um, we don't make determinations to say this is what you have to do. We just lay out more options and say, you know, you're, you're a big kid, you figure it out. Um, but we at least are empathetic to your situation, right? I think you said something earlier in the episode, you said when you're talking to friends and family, et cetera who don't really understand what you're going through and you say you're negotiating a $50 million exit and they're like, that's incredible. Like I can't believe you're doing that. Like, you know, high fives, what could you possibly be upset about? That is the worst possible person to be talking to you, right? It just

Ryan Rutan: invalidates everything that you're feeling in, in a single moment from somebody that you care about deeply right? That that that is a that is a blade that cuts deep.

Wil Schroter: Um and so what you're looking for, what we're all looking for in this process is someone that can just zoom out with us say, look, this has been a long journey, right? We understand, we empathize, we understand exactly what you went through because we're either going through it ourselves or we have gone through it. However, let me remind you about 100 times if possible, that this moment is the pent ultimate moment in your career, that this moment is the one that's going to affect so many people in that this is the moment where you're not trying to rush through it, You're not trying to rush to an end. You're trying to rush to a point where you feel you're going to feel good about this decision for the rest of your career. Alright, so that was fun, but let's actually keep this conversation going. You've heard what we think about this, but you know, Ryan and I would really like to hear what you think and we're online, like all day long, pretty much talking about every startup topic you could think of from fundraising, the customer acquisition to just really have to get all of this crazy startup stuff out of your head. And there's tons of other founders just like you, they're weighing in on these topics so you'll get a chance to just hang out and meet some really smart founders were also super, super easy to find you head over to groups dot startups dot com and let Ryan and I hear what's on your mind, let's get to know each other a little bit and let's just start having more of these

Ryan Rutan: conversations.