We're Shutting Down and I'm Scared
Been there.* If your payables and debts are all in the company's name, nobody is coming for your house. The likelihood that your business was going to die before you could pay all your debts was priced into your contracts. If you have employees, pay them and get them off your books first; employee wages are, depending on the state you're in, the one likely exception to that rule.* If they were in your name, well, that sucks, but still nobody is coming for your house. Your credit rating will probably absorb all the damage. I've had shitty credit all my life, so much so that it used to make it hard to get checking accounts (I'm not a deadbeat, I just don't have revolving credit, and do have billing disputes that I don't have time to resolve). Shitty credit is not that big of a deal. Just don't use credit.* It sounds like your wife is right. The existence of startups isn't a guarantee that you'll never need to work for someone else again. The normal life cycle of a startup founder is, (1) work for someone else, (2) start company, (3) run company into ground, (4) goto 1. Think of it this way: had your company been successful, it almost certainly would have left you in a state where you'd be working for someone else for a couple years during your earnout. "Not working for someone else" was never really on the table.* Getting a company funded and then running it is a resume plus. You won't have more trouble getting another job than you did getting the one you left to start this company.* Your investors expected you to fail. The odds were always overwhelmingly that you would. The whole startup investment model is, put money into 10 companies, hope 1 succeeds. Your investors are professionals. Let their problems remain their problems.* Are you going to get ridiculed for failing? Obviously, you're not an HN reader. You'd have gotten ridiculed for succeeding. Ridicule is the air we breathe. Why do you care?* Most small companies start from nothing. That's good news, because "nothing" is an easy state to achieve. Give yourself a couple years, and then try again.