The day I killed my dot-com

The rest of the meetings that day crawled by at a painful pace. The words always sounded clumsy and awkward; the sentiments never seemed authentic. I felt suspended in some kind of mental purgatory that demanded that I experience the collective disappointment of each and every person there.

That day I wished I didn't know anything intimate about my employees. I wished to know only their names and their titles, nothing else. It would have made the ending so much smoother, like a crisp transaction, cool and metallic. I could have gone home and slept peacefully that night, rationalizing that the state of the company was due simply to the downturn of the market.

But I did know. I knew that my V.P. of engineering dreamed of moving his wife and tiny daughter to the South of France. I knew that the elderly parents of my Russian database architect depended on the money orders he sent across the ocean every month. I knew that one of my senior managers hoped to move his young family of five children out to a farm with horses and chickens and apple trees.

My own dreams seemed trivial before this tapestry of family plans and lifelong ambitions and children's college funds. I knew that my employees understood the risks when they signed up: Start-ups are fragile and prone to disaster, so proceed with caution. And yet these bright, smart people who could have worked anywhere had chosen my company out of all the others, and I loved them for it. They had claimed the company's vision for their own. They weren't afraid to question assumptions or present new ideas. And yet.

We are. We were. We have been.

It ended far too soon -- before we accomplished what we set out to do. Our innovative software wouldn't land us on the cover of Wired magazine. Our ideas for revolutionizing online interaction would never be completely tested. There would be no farms, no houses in France, no six-month backpacking trips. Not this time.

My employees had to pack up their desks that Monday and go home. They were hurt, bewildered and upset. Office doors flew shut for the last time, phone calls were made, e-mails sent. Eventually I helped them load their personal belongings into boxes and walked with them to their cars. We hugged. The elevator stopped pinging open and shut, and the halls became quiet.

Going back the next day was awful. The hardest job had been completed, but what remained was tedious and sad: creditors to call, investors to brief, equipment to sell.

It was eerie to walk into empty offices and see chairs still arranged helter-skelter and scribbles all over the whiteboards, the ghosts of an impromptu meeting. The kitchen refrigerator still held brown paper sacks with initials on them, and the UPS delivery person still arrived on schedule with an armful of boxes. It felt like we had been vandalized, robbed of something precious and vital.

After days of cleaning up and putting away, my co-founders and I left with exactly what many founders of failed start-ups leave with: nothing more than the experience. No parachute. No Porsche. No paycheck.

My former employees quickly found jobs with wonderful companies. I'm envious of their new employers because I know how valuable they are. I wish we had made it to the end, had finished what we started. But we didn't, and that's the reality of this spasmodic industry.

Ultimately, I'm glad that I was a part of it, despite the outcome. I'll always remember the torturous day it all ended, but there were many days before it that were pure and exhilarating and wonderful, and I'll always remember those too.

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The author chose not to reveal the name of her startup, citing legal issues related to the process of closing down the company and settling with creditors.

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