Post-Startup Life: Reflecting on My First 18 Months Living in Denver

In December 2017 my husband, myself, and the remaining cadre of Mattermarkers who remained moved to Denver as renters and “short-timers”. Given how we started out, I didn’t put odds on staying long. We started out fresh from California in the middle of winter, as part of an acquisition capping off a long M&A process that had left me pretty burned out. We hadn’t planned to move, but it was what we needed to do to close the deal so we did it. Alighting on a new city in the midst of the holiday season, we didn’t have our support network built up over the past 10 years (basically my entire adult life) in the Bay Area, let alone the right clothes to weather the initial shock of change.

After spending years building something that’s no longer yours, especially if as in my case you have nothing (at least economically) to show for it, can raise questions about whether it was worth building at all. I spent 5.5 years, from early 2012 to mid 2018, on the Referly/Mattermark/FullContact rollercoaster with an average annual salary of $120K and net negative personal savings rate. In the sale of Mattermark, the purchase price did not clear the amount invested by preferred shareholders and common stock (including all the founders and employees) was wiped out. There was no success fee for completing the deal, just my honor and self esteem + a job offer at the acquirer with a relocation bonus.

I’m not complaining (and doing the deal was ultimately my choice and the best option available to the company), just laying it out in a bit more detail because sometimes I think people try to leave things vague to create an aura of mystery when founders have these types of exits. Despite all the work I’d done to separate my identity from my role as startup CEO, I felt quite shitty about this outcome… and it took a lot longer to work through those feelings than I could have predicted.

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