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Does Startup Success Validate Us Personally?
How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
How Does My Startup Get Acquired?
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?
The Case Against Full Transparency
Should I Feel Guilty for Failing?

The Benefits of a Hard Reset

Wil Schroter

The Benefits of a Hard Reset

Sometimes having to burn it all down is the best medicine our startup can take.

It sure doesn't feel that way at the time. When we're sitting across from an income statement that's been decimated and thinking of having to go back to our team, investors, and partners to tell them some truly horrible news, the last thing we're thinking is "Hey this might be great!"

But for those of you that have never been through it, I'm here to tell you, it may in fact be the best thing that ever happened to our startups.

That's because a Hard Reset gives us the one opportunity to go back and reset all of our decisions that we've made, teeing us up to build a far more efficient and capable startup going forward. It sucks — like I said — but it also has some one-time benefits we'll simply never get again.

We get to Pick a New Kickball Team

One of the things that we rarely spend time thinking about is whether or not if given the opportunity, we'd hire back the exact same people for the exact same roles we did the first time. You see, when we're building our startup initially, we add roles on an ad hoc basis based on a ton of assumptions of what the business might do. That means invariably we hire for jobs that never really became what we thought they'd be by people who never quite lived up to their billing. It happens.

The Hard Reset means we get to pick a whole new kickball team from scratch, and only focus on the players and positions that are absolutely critical. We get the benefit of knowing what we really needed versus what we thought we'd need. And more importantly, we get to make those decisions based on real-world experience with people we've had reps with. It's a very different ballgame.

We get to Reset Past Decisions

It's so rare in life that we can basically hit the "undo" button on big decisions like organizational structures, that ridiculous office lease we signed, or the countless vendor deals we did that "sounded good at the time."

The Hard Reset means we get to undo all of that. The fact that there are so many decisions we will never make again, and have a one-time chance to undo them says it all. While clearing out of our once-proud office feels shitty in the beginning, there's no version where this time next year we're going to be looking back at our income statement saying "Boy, I really wish we were throwing $20K a month down the drain for an office no one ever wanted to go to." (I'm looking at you, COVID...)

We Attain Ultimate Efficiency

Resetting our operating expenses for true efficiency is something we end up doing because we have to, but over time we start to realize that it may have been the most productive thing we could have ever done. That's because, along the way, we're rarely optimizing for efficiency. We're optimizing for optimism. We hope that new salesperson will hit their numbers. We hope that the new developer will ship the product faster. We keep hoping that all of these decisions will lead to efficiency. But — now we actually know.

So this time around we have a much more efficient path to profitability. We know what we can live without, and we know what we absolutely must-have. It's the ultimate do-over, and if we look at it in the context of resetting our business to achieve a better future outcome, it just might give us a much better feeling about the months to come.

In Case You Missed It

How Much Should I Be Working? (podcast). Wil and Ryan take a deep dive into the benefits of thinking quality and not quantity when it comes to your weekly punch card.

Optimizing for Productivity. Working through peak productivity is easy. It’s the valleys that we’re concerned about. The key is to plan for and optimize the valleys so we can recharge effectively.

I’m Burnt Out. What Do I Do? When we hit a point of burn out it's important that we understand what to do about it. If we ignore it, the problem only gets much worse. So let's take a look at what Founders do to deal with burnout head-on.

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Judi IDN Poker Sonic Poker

the most I afraid thing to do, up until now...

Reply4 years ago

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