“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” “Serge”, the CEO of a struggling startup, said to me. “I think I’m going to give up.”
“What?” I responded. Serge’s capitulation said didn’t register on me. It was foreign to my way of thinking. Worse yet, Serge’s company wasn’t doomed to fail. There was a path if Serge choose to take it.
I dug in. “Why would you quit now? You can win!”
“Brett, I’m tired,” Serge said. “I’m tired of fighting. I don’t want to fight anymore.”
I sighed. There was a tone in Serge’s voice. I’d heard this tone before. And I hated that tone.
If you’re not prepared to fight, then you’ll never make it as a startup CEO.
Maybe I’m being harsh, but Serge’s tone was the tone of a quitter. And I hate quitters! As I said, that quitting thought process is just so foreign to my way of thinking that I just couldn’t relate.
You fight until you can’t fight any more. You find a way. Every successful startup CEO I’ve ever worked with is a fighter. And every startup CEO has many moments of truth where their mettle is tested.
Serge had two months of funding left. He was raising money and he had potential investors that were interested in…
