It’s taken a few days for me to process this, but my startup, Stir.com, is no more. On Friday, May 14, we shut down the servers, turned our traffic over to Singlesnet, and began to prepare for the next phase in our careers. That day might have been one of the hardest I’ve yet experienced.
Over the last two years I’ve literally spent every spare moment thinking about my website. Our team dealt with the twists and turns came our way. Some were our own response to the marketplace, and others were part of a strategy tax. Regardless of the source, the team found a way to make the impossible happen.
A few months ago we got an even greater challenge. Make more happen with even less. Go viral, with less resources. Even after our marketing budget was reduced to virtually zero, we started to grow our traffic. After reducing the size of the team, we continued to put out feature after feature. We had a new design ready that would be far more user friendly. After nearly hitting bottom, I was starting to have hope.
Then we had a meeting with our former GM.
Even with some positive momentum, we were told that we weren’t part of the strategy anymore. Even our role as “skunk works” for experimental acquisition and features wasn’t going to be needed. We were done.
I’ve given a lot of passion to things in my life and this was no different. We’d been in survival mode for a long time, and I worked obsessively enough that I even stopped going to wine tastings with a group that I helped form. The sacrifices were real, and after all of that it truly and deeply hurt to see it all go away.
We were never a normal startup. We didn’t have the pot of money in the bank that we had to manage and we never had to worry about making payroll. We had a corporate parent that could fund us with some portion of their profits from other endeavors. That meant they could pull funding whenever they wanted. We were a budget item more than an investment.
I’ll say that I’m proud of all of the things that we accomplished. I feel more confident than ever with my ability to execute on bold strategy. Here’s to the next startup
