Title: throwaway and anonyous CTO and cofounder here - we have been around for 2 years, and for the last 2 months in serious talks with a major ($6bn t&#x2F;o) company to sell our startup. the deal would clearly be great for the founders personally - but also provide fantastic strategic assistance to the startup, propelling our user adoption to insane levels and giving us the financial backing to scale.<p>We were told last week that the VC who backs this large co won&#x27;t do the deal for internal politics reasons. Bigco (right up to VP level) still want to do it, but can&#x27;t.<p>we&#x27;ve broken off talks, have lost months of traction and work - aside from the enormous emotional cost, and i&#x27;m personally totally despirited. the thought of leaving product alone again and getting into months of further VC courting to raise the money leaves me cold.<p>what&#x27;s more, our current VCs &amp; angel investors - previously delighted to be involved + finance cheaply with the smell of an exit around the corner - are now dropping us like a hot turd, putting us at serious risk of going under in the coming months.<p>we&#x27;ve built a startup that&#x27;s so disruptive, we nearly had an exit within 2 years - but now we&#x27;re about to crash and burn.<p>just wanted to share the story and hope there are some vague lessons to learn from it.
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