I was in a startup in the early aughts and had this experience. We had a telecom company that was supposedly building the "next interwebs for business". Ambitious, hard to sell to people since it was insanely complicated.
I was there at the beginning, then you start to see it. The closed founder meetings, no more team meetings. The hushed conversations at lunch. The rumor mill started to circle - VC money running out. The CEO blew all the money on coke and hookers. Nobody wants to answer basic questions like why the rollout of the new product is taking weeks and weeks to get going.
People KNOW what's going on, but nobody wants to jump off the ship, only to find out the company figures it out and all your co-workers are now millionaires and you're back at some other startup busting your ass for some unknown future.
People hang on, believing its going to happen, then you show up one day and the office is dark, the cop outside says you're not working today or tomorrow or ever really and you should go home. You hold out hope the company can pull out the nosedive, and when it doesn't, you have to go through the five stages of bereavement until you accept that it was really doomed from the start and you should have seen it but didn't want to believe this company was really just a complete façade to fleece money from some big VC firm.
I was there at the beginning, then you start to see it. The closed founder meetings, no more team meetings. The hushed conversations at lunch. The rumor mill started to circle - VC money running out. The CEO blew all the money on coke and hookers. Nobody wants to answer basic questions like why the rollout of the new product is taking weeks and weeks to get going.
People KNOW what's going on, but nobody wants to jump off the ship, only to find out the company figures it out and all your co-workers are now millionaires and you're back at some other startup busting your ass for some unknown future.
People hang on, believing its going to happen, then you show up one day and the office is dark, the cop outside says you're not working today or tomorrow or ever really and you should go home. You hold out hope the company can pull out the nosedive, and when it doesn't, you have to go through the five stages of bereavement until you accept that it was really doomed from the start and you should have seen it but didn't want to believe this company was really just a complete façade to fleece money from some big VC firm.