How to go from being a super hot company to lucky to get acquired in less than 24 months

I’ve been lucky to have started four software companies. Every time they end, whether it’s “a good outcome” or “a bad outcome”, it’s universally devastating.

I was at Amzn early '00s when we lost 95% of our market cap. Later at FB I negotiated a down-round in '09, and then in '12 our stock dropped 50% post-IPO. I was on the board of a public company that went bankrupt (Borders) and a start-up that went under (Hello). Some lessons:

1. Most founders are bad at growth, so if you're amazing at it, the advantage is significant. Consider: Most startups die not because founders are bad or products suck, but because they couldn't figure out how to get anyone to try them.

My first company @twitch sold for a billion dollars. My second one lost $75 million in 36 months. People love talking about success, but today I'm going to talk about failure. It's time to be honest about Atrium: