Thanks for sharing. I sympathize with you, because I just recently went through something similar, with less success than you've had. It sounds like a tough situation, but you're not out of options. You might just be out of the preferred options.
It seems to me that if you're truly out of money, you can either:
1) Try to double down on funding. Your investors can either re-up you or kiss the money they've put in and the debt/equity they have goodbye. But this just puts you on the treadmill for another X months. If you don't like how that feels now, maybe it's not the best direction.
2) Try to get acquired by someone who will pay you to finish your product.
3) Get outside work to pay the bills and put your startup into side project status. Surely with what you've built, you have made yourself highly employable, and if you're in a big-time accelerator, you probably know people who need your skills.
4) Make a "personal pivot", and use the skills and experience you've developed to springboard into something else.
I've come to learn that the discourse in the startup world is completely slanted toward success stories, even though success is far from the most common outcome. Almost no one gets it right the first time.
For example, from my own limping startup, I've learned a lot about what I did that didn't set myself up for success, and how I would do it differently. I got a day job--which I'm loving so far--and I'm planning to save a substantial portion of my pay to build a warchest over the next few years, such that next time, I won't dive in already broke (just one of several crucial things I would do differently).
It seems to me that if you're truly out of money, you can either:
1) Try to double down on funding. Your investors can either re-up you or kiss the money they've put in and the debt/equity they have goodbye. But this just puts you on the treadmill for another X months. If you don't like how that feels now, maybe it's not the best direction. 2) Try to get acquired by someone who will pay you to finish your product. 3) Get outside work to pay the bills and put your startup into side project status. Surely with what you've built, you have made yourself highly employable, and if you're in a big-time accelerator, you probably know people who need your skills. 4) Make a "personal pivot", and use the skills and experience you've developed to springboard into something else.
I've come to learn that the discourse in the startup world is completely slanted toward success stories, even though success is far from the most common outcome. Almost no one gets it right the first time.
For example, from my own limping startup, I've learned a lot about what I did that didn't set myself up for success, and how I would do it differently. I got a day job--which I'm loving so far--and I'm planning to save a substantial portion of my pay to build a warchest over the next few years, such that next time, I won't dive in already broke (just one of several crucial things I would do differently).