When Your Startup Goes From Doing What You Love to Doing What It Takes

Take the money or run?

A startup exit is awesome if you can survive the grind. And that can be easier said than done.

Yesterday, I got an email via my website from “Liz”, an engineer at a Software as a Service startup. Liz is concerned because, while her startup is heading to a seemingly inevitable acquisition, no one can pin down a time frame on when the exit will happen. She’s worried that her skills, and her passion, are drying up.

“I‘ve been here for over three years and have gone from senior developer to VP of Engineering in that time. The company is doing really well and is planning on selling, hopefully in 2021, and I will potentially cash out at around $50K before tax.

I love what we do and the journey we have been on, but I feel my personal growth has been stunted recently with my attention being focused on making the business more efficient rather than focusing on the tech (my goal is to become a CTO). This is making me want to look elsewhere for more of a challenge. Should I stick it out and wait for the sale?”

To summarize, this is a good problem for Liz, but everything she has done for the last X months, and everything she will do for the next indeterminate Y months, is going to be focused on…