here's the thing about founder expectations pagerduty just hit $1.1B market cap at $500M ARR. thats 2.1x revenue for a profitable company that took 15 years to build profitable. $500M ARR. 2x meanwhile i talk to founders running $2M ARR companies that arent growing, arent profitable, and they want 10x revenue multiples. sometimes higher founders misunderstand how valuations actually work when investors pay a premium, its because theyre buying a discount on the future. the company has momentum, the market is huge, the team is executing. 10x revenue makes sense if that revenue is going to be 10x bigger in a few years but when growth stalls? when the company never lives up to that potential? theres a massive correction back to todays actual value. and todays actual value for a small stagnant unprofitable company is not 10x ARR. its nowhere close public markets are ruthless about this. pagerduty peaked at $50+ per share when the growth story was intact. now its $12. the market repriced the company based on what it actually is today, not what it might have become private markets are slower to correct but they do correct. eventually reality catches up i get it. you raised at a high valuation. you worked on this for years. you want your outcome to reflect that effort but the market doesnt pay for effort. it pays for results and potential so what should you do if youre sitting on a company thats not growing, not profitable, and youre holding out for a valuation that made sense 3 years ago when growth was real - youre probably stuck sometimes the smart move is to reset expectations. take an exit that actually closes. clear your cap table. free yourself up to go build something bigger the founders who build generational companies often do it on their second or third try. after theyve learned what they needed to learn. after theyve reset holding onto a stalled company waiting for a valuation that isnt coming back - thats not conviction. thats just being stuck

you raised $8M at a $40M valuation you ground it out for 4 years and got to $2M ARR while burning money or breakeven at bast solid product. customers renew. team is competent some money still left in the bank you have revenue. you have profit. you just dont have the growth rate that returns their fund so now youre stuck your VC ghosts your emails why? because youre growing 15% not 150% cant raise because youre not growing fast enough cant sell because the pref stack means you walk with nothing cant shut down because investors wont write it off (they have you marked up in their next fundraising deck) cant keep grinding because youre burned out and own very little of your company by normal business standards you succeeded by venture standards youre a zombie and theres no infrastructure to help you exit no broker wants to touch a $2M ARR company with $8M raised no acquirer wants to deal with a messy cap table no investor wants to have the honest conversation hundreds of founders are stuck in this exact position right now we need new paths for founders to exit companies that work but dont scale

every legendary founder has a Loopt in their past sam altman had Loopt before OpenAI. stewart butterfield had Glitch before Slack. the pattern is everywhere once you start looking the Loopt isn’t the failure. the Loopt is the training ground. it’s where you learn what actually matters, what you’re actually good at, what actually works but most founders get stuck on their Loopt for way too long they keep pushing because investors expect it. because shutting down feels like giving up. because the ecosystem has no clean path from “this isn’t working” to “let me try the next thing” so they grind. they run on a local hamster wheel. they spend their best years keeping a zombie company alive instead of building the generational company they’re actually capable of this is one of the biggest wastes of human capital in tech almost infinite founder potential is trapped in projects that aren’t working. everyone knows it. the founder knows it. the investors know it. but there’s no mechanism to unlock that potential for the next thing your Loopt should be a stepping stone not a trap the faster you get through your Loopt the faster you get to your OpenAI