>The last few weeks of the program are a bit of a blur. My morale plummeted, and my stress skyrocketed. I dreaded going to the weekly dinners, where I would have to talk to my cohort and confirm that no, we hadn’t found an idea yet and yes, we were still super excited about our “company.” I did little else but eat, code and sleep. I felt like everyone else was ready to raise millions, while we were desperately trying to find a product.

>Postponing Demo Day was a no-brainer. We didn’t have an idea we believed in, and although we could have cobbled one together and raised some seed funding, we didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that, in part because it seemed disingenuous. But primarily it was because taking half a million dollars of other people’s money would have moved my stress level from unhealthy to crippling.

>But skipping Demo Day didn’t fix our lack of conviction. The rapid-fire pivoting continued. Around this time, I started coming to terms with the fact that I was seriously unhappy. For as long as I’ve been interested in startups, I have never wanted to start a company simply for the sake of starting a company. Yet doing things “for the sake of starting a company” was where I found myself, as I scrambled for a plausible idea.I don’t know if this is true for other people, but as a flailing founder I desperately wanted to believe in the startup myth—that success was just over the next ridge, that if we waited a bit longer, or had a slightly better idea, we would suddenly be riding a rocket ship. I hated doubting myself, but I’ve never been good at blind faith. So I decided to leave.