What To Do When Your Startup Fails To Raise Money

You have 4 options, but only 3 of them are viable

Joe Procopio
5 min readApr 25, 2022

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image by yanalya on freepik

It’s every founder’s worst nightmare. You pour years into a business idea, then months into building the perfect pitch deck and a long series of stressful investor meetings. Then at the end of it you’re left with a smattering of well-wishes, a few vague invites to send follow-up emails, and a whole big bucket of wasted time.

You’re back at square one. No funding, no traction, no resources.

This is not uncommon.

I don’t know you or your company, but I’ve played the startup game for over 20 years, both bootstrapped and VC-funded, and I can assure you of one inarguable fact:

Your business idea just isn’t investable.

Now what are you going to do about it?

The worst thing you can do is keep charging ahead with your fundraising plan. That’s the definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Here’s what to do instead, based on my own experience hitting this same wall, and also helping dozens of founders, both first-timers and repeat founders, break through it.

You have four options.

Option 1: Give Up

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Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio

Written by Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. I write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com

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