i sold my last startup for a semi-retirement amount while being from a 3rd world country 3 years ago. during this time, a more experienced older founder from the US came in contact with me and tried multiple times to get me to work with him. (including flying to my country)
he was more of an idea guy and wanted a technical person to join him. however i rebuffed his attempts multiple times because i wanted to enjoy the money i made from the acquisition.
i ended up traveling the world for 1.5 years and moving countries. i however didn’t enjoy my travels for multiple reasons (being lonely, purposeless etc). and the last 1.5 years ive semi-seriously tried to bootstrap 3-4 projects and failed absolutely miserable in all of those and my savings keep getting depleted lol.
in the meantime, the experienced founder failed at his first attempt but then joined an accelerator 1.5 years ago, came up with a unique idea and his new startup recently reached unicorn status.
i cant help but regret my decision to not work with him and its been occupying my brain for over a month now. has anyone gone through something similar? how did you come to terms with it?
how do you deal with regret?
byu/AppropriateHamster inEntrepreneur
Posted by AppropriateHamster
5 Comments
Never been through something like that before, but I would say that it’s never too late ? You can always rejoin or look for someone else to work on something new ? Unless that’s out of the way for you !
No matter how much you sold your old comp for staying in the past kills the joy of the present , if you sold it for an amount that you were happy with then why not move on to other big things ? Rather than always regretting a move that is probably not even a mistake
It sounds like therapy could be beneficial for you
damn that’s a tough one but you gotta remember he failed once too before hitting it big 💀
Plus who knows if you would’ve even meshed well as cofounders – personality clashes kill more startups than bad ideas do. At least you got to travel and figure out what you don’t want, that’s still valuable data even if it sucked at the time
Maybe stop looking backwards and use this fire under your ass to build something that matters to you 🔥
This is going to sound real “beat on your chest.”, but business doesn’t allow for regret. It allows for lessons, reflection, and progress. You have to keep your head up and your pace consistent, just keep moving forward. Regret is the number one barrier to the future because it forces you to exist in the past.
Been there. What helped me was treating regret as data, not identity. You made the best call with the info and priorities you had then. I would run a 90 day execution plan on one new idea and score weekly progress, that usually quiets the what-if loop.