I fell off the horse
I fucked it up and now I'm sad
It’s been a tough 6 months for me. Last year was horrible for other reasons, but they’re not my reasons to talk about. This year’s shit is all mine.
I fell off the horse
TLDR; I used to have a business, now I don’t. I’m working, but I’m sad about it.
We should’ve seen it coming, but we got sucked into the classic small business trap of having one big client. On top of that, the client had lots of potential (for us) which meant we could see a pipeline of work that might last a long time.
We should have seen the warning signs. Over time, the longer engagements dropped off. We were only getting 3-month gigs, that took 4 months to arrive. So each time we won, we lost another month. We were eating our own runway.
Then the collapse happened. There were political machinations afoot that we weren’t aware of. Or, at least weren’t aware of how seismic they were. Our primary business sponsor left, and we were left holding a prototype for a software tool that was not ready for market, but the client who asked for it no longer wanted it…
…except of course, they had never really wanted it in the first place. It’s just we’d built up enough kudos in the building that they would entertain ideas that we brought to them. In the end our idea was not substantial enough for them to buy into. Too vague, too risky (by their standards) and, critically for us, not going in the direction they were about to turn.
We scrambled. Tried everything. We marketed the shit out of our new thing, but didn’t have the money, the time or the reach to get traction before we could get it airborne. We applied for funds, grants, loans and even considered an eye-watering “growth loan” before we realised that we were done.
We had just enough money in the bank to pay a liquidator to extract the last vapours from the business and pay our debts. By the time we finally signed the docs, it turned out it was almost exactly six years to the day since we formed the business. We’d been working together for nine years, and I had been my own boss for 12 years.
Now I’m back working for someone else, and I’m sad.
Not because the new company is bad. They’re a great company to work for, and there is a sense of relief about not handling all the minutiae of running a business. Not to mention I get a pension and other benefits.
I’m sad because it died. I could’ve saved it if we’d realised earlier, had built up more reach, had more clients, protected the pipeline, watched our cashflow or paid ourselves less. Hindsight is always 20/20, right?
Me and my business partner are going to take some time to think. It’s not the end for us, just for our business. I think the next year is going to be very hard for everyone financially. The AI bubble will either burst, or consume everything.
Either way, I think 2026-27 is going to see the landscape of work change massively, whether we like it or not, and we’re going to see what comes of it before we make any big moves.
I fell off the horse
I fucked it up and now I'm sad
an LRG clusterbork
Cover image: Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Wellcome Collectionpdimagearchive.org