Startups fail, we hear that all the time. Failure is good, we hear that all the time too. But we rarely hear about the pain, the shame and the second-guessing that comes with it. Even worse, at least for me, we rarely hear about the opportunities that lie, or may lie in something ending beyond just a pivot or a lesson learnt. In that moment, reading that email on the bench, my feet hurting, I wished someone would have told me what I know now to be true. This startup failing is not proof that something is broken within you. In fact, it's an opening and an opportunity to find something new within you and for you.

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“– let go of the team and cleared the bank accounts and let go of the company; tried to sell to
some competitors. Looking back at it, I see we had just scratched the surface of the journey.”
Welcome to the Reboot Podcast.
Hi, this is Dan Putt from Reboot.
I couldn’t help but replay a story in my mind as I listened to this conversation. I remember my
feet hurt like hell. This was a random Wednesday night back in mid-January of 2013; I was
sitting at Bryan Ice-skating Rink with a pair of rented skates on. I was waiting for a high school
student who I was mentoring at the time, to show up for an event. I sat down on a bench and
decided to take a quick glance at my email.
A few weeks earlier, in a conversation with existing investors, they had explicitly stated what
everyone on the team already knew and what I was painfully aware of: our startup was on its last
legs. They had warned that without an outside investor, they would not invest any more in the
company. Deep down, I really knew this was right and I agreed with them, but it still hurt.
Actually, it kind of stung to the deepest depths of my sense of self-worth. But we did leave that
meeting with a small window of hope that perhaps if we could get one more injection and buy
ourselves a little more time.
And on this cold day in January, surrounded by laughing kids on the ice, my feet hurting like
hell, I received an email that sent a clear message. "Time is up." I remember the walk home, all
forty-plus blocks, and I was in a daze. It was like my deepest fears about my worthiness had been
decided that day and the verdict was in. I was a failure. Another failure on the resume. What
would I do now? Who would ever want to work with me again? What good could possibly come
of this?
"Startups fail," we hear that all the time. "Failure is good," we hear that all the time too. But we
rarely hear about the pain, the shame and the second-guessing that comes with it. Even worse, at
least for me, we rarely hear about the opportunities that lie, or may lie in something ending
beyond just a pivot or a lesson learnt. In that moment, reading that email on the bench, my feet
hurting, I wished someone would have told me what I know now to be true. This startup failing
is not proof that something is broken within you. In fact, it's an opening and an opportunity to
find something new within you and for you.
Nick Russell was cofounder and CEO of UK-based, We Are Popup. Yes, I said "was." Nick
joined Jerry on the very day he handed over the keys and closed up shop on a startup of 3+ years.
His startup ended for different reasons than mine; reasons that still gnaw at him today. In this
discussion, Jerry and Nick talk about what he is experiencing now, what he has learnt and wishes
he had done differently, and a surprising path forward for him. One that supported me through
my own painful ending, and one that could be helpful for you in your own transitions.
**

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Apply now for our CEO bootcamp this fall, October 5th through the 9th, 2016. Join us, and 14
other peers for the retreat that may change your work and life for the better. Apply now at
reboot.io/bootcamp.
**
"Our capacity to fail is essential to what we are. The gap between what we are and what we can
be is also the space in which utopias [or our entrepreneurial endeavors] are conceived.
Ultimately, our capacity to fail makes us what we are; our being as essentially failing creatures
lies at the root of any aspiration. For, in a sense, the capacity to fail is much more important
than any individual human achievements: It is that which makes them possible. We are designed
to fail."
This quote is from Costica Bradatan. It's from an opinion piece he wrote in The New York Times
in 2013. You can find a link to it on our website at reboot.io/podcast.
Jerry Colonna: Hey Nick, it's really great to connect with you again. I guess it's been
about two years since we first met at the Tuscany bootcamp, a couple of years
ago?
Nicholas Russell: Yes, absolutely Jerry, it's good to talk to you again.
Jerry: First of all, thank you for coming on the show. Before we get started, why don't
you take a minute and introduce yourself?
Nicholas: My name is Nick Russell, I am the former founder/cofounder of a business called
'We Are Pop Up'. Now it's called 'We Were Pop Up' but it was called 'We Are
Pop Up'.
Jerry: I think that sort of speaks to what it was that you wanted to talk through today; is
that right?
Nicholas: Yes, absolutely. Obviously, since we met in Italy, the business experienced – at
that point it was in a place of growing pain, and then we had an absolutely great
year of growth. Now, we have reached a point where we ran out of capital. So,
we've, as of today, sold it and handed over the keys.
Jerry: Wow. How does that feel?
Nicholas: It feels a number of ways. In some ways, it feels like the failure, the feeling of
failure that we talked about back in Tuscany, and I think the feeling of failure that
so often people in the startup space try to avoid. I mean, obviously I have thought
about bootcamp every day since going on it. I think a lot of times, we are afraid of
failure, but we are afraid of this kind of conceptual failure; whereas now, it's a
very actual thing, and I would hesitate to call it failure. So, there is that side of it.

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On the other side of it, I also go back to bootcamp again and talking about getting
rid of delusion and you know, even some of Parker Palmer's stuff from Let Your
Life Speak about finding ground again, coming out of the clouds. That part is
actually really reliving.
Jerry: And what else is there for you?
Nicholas: I'd guess, overwhelmingly there is a feeling of sadness from – I thought we were
quite deep into the journey. I thought we were quite advanced after three to four
years in this thing, of really pushing it forward. It's such a grind. I thought we
were quite far along, but then now having kind of stepped back and cleared all the
slates, so I let go of the team and cleared the bank accounts and let go of the
company, and tried to sell to some competitors.
I then conducted an open process and done DD with everybody from
multinationals to some people who had very strange ideas of what to with it.
Looking back at it, I see we had just scratched the surface of the journey. So, I'd
go back to the original genesis and I don't know, I would have said that we
accomplished about 70% of what we wanted to do, but now I look back and I
think, we accomplished 2%.
Jerry: It sounds fairly harsh on yourself.
Nicholas: Oh no, not harsh; I mean, yes, there's parts of it that are very hard, but in terms of,
you know, I can see its potential now and you know, you love the founder title
and you love the energy around having a tech company and being a tech person,
that whole kind of halo. But then I look at the people that we were serving; we
served obviously well over 1000 to 2000 customers really well. But then I think
there are still millions of people out there who I don't know that they'll ever get
the solution that we were trying to put together. That's the sad part, not so much
that we failed. I mean, that part really sucks, but it's more like there's so much
potential.
Jerry: I see; so it's really the grief of not realizing the full potential that was there, not
being able to live it out.
Nicholas: Yes. It's kind of like you are trying to get to the moon, and you launched enough
test rockets to know you can get there, and then your funding is cut. You are like,
"I know we can get to the moon," but we are not the people to get there.
Jerry: It's painful.
Nicholas: Yes, it's rough.

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Jerry: What's the hardest part for you these days? I mean, it's ironic that, you know –
because we actually tried to schedule this a few times, and it's ironic that we are
actually speaking on the day in which you "Handed over the keys."
Nicholas: Yes, I just thought that was your ability to prognosticate.
Jerry: Well, that's me. I am like this shaman.
Nicholas: No, actually I specifically aligned the handover day for this.
Jerry: Right, even better; you are the shaman.
Nicholas: I wanted to give it a bit of theatre.
Jerry: What's the hardest part?
Nicholas: The hardest part is, you know, letting go. What to let go of? There's an offer with
the buyer to continue, and I think that is probably fairly standard in these cases.
Jerry: You mean, for you personally to continue as an employee kind of thing?
Nicholas: We are still discussing that. I mean, at least in an advisory capacity, potentially
for myself and my cofounders.
Jerry: Gotcha.
Nicholas: It's weird, we've been going back and forth about that all week, which is like, do
you want to continue the journey if it's somebody else's journey? Or, do you say,
we had our shot and it's time to go? We've even had a number, I mean, when we
went public, obviously we had to engage, in the UK, what's called an insolvency
practitioner. That's somebody who takes you through the process as you wrap up.
It's one of those things where if you do it right like we did it, then you come out
clean and you get to move on and life goes on.
Some people don't make the decision as soon as we made it and that can get quite
difficult. We did everything we were supposed to do. We did it right by
everybody we could, and I think we came out of it in terms of landed it and sold
it. We tried to conduct a number of private sales which was interesting because
the solicitor, he was like, "You want to go public with it." So, we were like, well,
we are going to try to do it privately before we do it publically.
We did that, we didn't really reach any result. We talked to a number of great
people, but we could never kind of connect the dots. So, finally he said, "Boys, it's
time to go public." So we were like, yes, all right. So we sent out an email
announcing that the site was closing and it was for sale, to 50,000 people. He was
like, "Wow, when you go public, you really go public."

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Jerry: You really went public, exactly.
Nicholas: Our for-sale PDF was downloaded 900 times and we talked to a lot of people.
Some of the offers were like, "Yes, I want to buy it without the team"; "Yes, I
want to buy it with the team." We got a number of offers which were like, "I'm
not going to buy it, but you have been released from all your non-competes and
everything. So, why don't you come and re-found it and let's rebuild it? You have
the know-how; let's just restart with me as your backer and forget the old thing
and let's do the new thing."
It's quite a confusing journey because it's like, well, I love what I do and I believe
in what I do, and I believe in what we are doing. My team was amazing, it really
shows the power of what we are doing that they were so dedicated, I mean, even
to the very end. They went through it all and it was great. Then you hit that
moment where you are like, I didn't see that I would have the option to continue.
Jerry: Right.
Nicholas: I thought we were just going to lay this thing down and emerge on the other side,
and life goes on. Let me know what this looks like. Then all these offers keep
coming in and you are like, well, do I want to do it? Am I any good at it? Was that
just a speed-bump? When you get down to the founder thing of "always keep
going" you know, when do you stop?
Jerry: How did you make the decision to shut down? Was it a consequence of capital?
Nicholas: Talk about delusion; first and foremost it was a cap table problem. It was one of
those decisions that was made two-and-a-half years ago that – it's not that we kept
ignoring it; we had a seed investor, they had prep shares, they had quite a large
stake in the business. They kind of stepped back about a year-and-a-half ago and
they said, "This is going to be really hard for you guys. So, good luck."
They had a big stake, they had a lot of downside protection, they had the full
whack. They had prep shares, they were participating, they had all the consents,
they had a prep dividend, you know, just the full works. So, they stepped away,
we found some additional seed capital – I don't think it is a secret. We talked
about this even back in Italy that the business had always been under-capitalized.
We hit the point where we needed – we were getting great traction.
At the end of 2015, we had a number of series-A funds, you know, blue chips
looking at the business, some out of the US, some out of China. Everything
looked great and we just needed another half a million to a million to really break
through. We found some guys willing to put that up and they said, "You and your
cofounder are underweight. You guys have such a small stake in the business that
you guys have way too little. We need you to have about triple that."

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So, we went back to the seed investor and we were like, "Well, you know, they
say we need substantially more." The seed investor said, "Well, we are not going
to do that till they give us the term sheet and demand a restructure." We went
back to them and said, "Look they can do it, but we need a term sheet." The new
guys said, "No, they are over-weight, we don't want to deal with them. You
restructure and we'll do a deal." That's the hill we died on.
Jerry: So it was less of a choice than it was a consequence of the past choices, if you
will.
Nicholas: That's a great way of putting it. It's something that – you know, we knew we had
this problem, we kept going round in circles with the seed guys last year and they
just never moved. It's one of those things where we kept tabling it and tabling it.
As I sat there and looked at it, by the time everything went off, it was late March.
We did everything we could. We did everything we could to kind of move it
forward. You sit there and you look at it and you are like, this has nothing to do
with where we are. This has nothing to do with everything we have done over the
last year. Like you said, this is something – this is a hangover from a party long
ago. That was the bitter part.
Jerry: So, I'll ask you to sort of circle back again, what would be helpful for you now, on
this day, as you are looking forward?
Nicholas: I guess, how to be okay with that because it's not your standard, it didn't work and
we ran out of capital. We made a decision as a founding team that we didn't
understand the consequences of. I mean, the business was – obviously, the
business needed more, but it was going in the right direction. I think if it had been
a hard failure, that would be easier, but in this case, it is such a bitter-sweet pill.
It's like, how to be okay with that.
Jerry: So, how to be okay with the way that it actually did unfold. What is the piece that
is the hardest part to be okay with? Was it the fact that the business itself actually
wasn't failing as much as it was a failure of the way in which you capitalized?
Nicholas: There's that; I mean, the hardest point was the decision to pull the plug because
what became apparent was that you know, we could have kept getting bits of seed
capital. I mean, we could have kept it running. We had angels lined up to help us
through some transitions with 50k and 100k chunks. It was that moment where
you look at it and you say, I can't take any more money on this cap table and my
gorilla investor isn't willing to renegotiate. So therefore, you know, functionally I
can run the business and I can keep putting money into it, but I know that I am
never going to get to the A-round that allows me to actually step-change the
business. So therefore, I have to refuse those lifelines and I have to land this.

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Jerry: So, the piece that you are struggling with is being okay with that decision you
made.
Nicholas: Yes, really owning it and not feeling it was right because I know it was the right
thing to do, but in living with it.
Jerry: Why is living with it difficult?
Nicholas: Because I can so easily imagine the other outcomes.
Jerry: What's the voice in your head saying to you about you?
Nicholas: The voice in my head is saying, it's time to move on.
Jerry: Yes.
Nicholas: It's time to let go. It's time to close this chapter.
Jerry: So then there's another voice in your head, which is having a hard time letting go.
Nicholas: Which is saying, there's still life in it. Somebody's bought it. It's possible to
continue this journey. We still believe in the market. We didn't have a vision
problem and we didn't have – we had some executional misfires, but I can see it
working. The conflict that sits there is what got me to where I had to make that
call for compromises. So, you know, if I keep going in any fashion, is that just
another compromise?
Jerry: Nick, what is it that you feel about yourself?
Nicholas: I'm very proud of myself and by extension of my team for seeing it through to the
end. We tried so hard and we never gave up and we pushed. The harder it got, the
harder we pushed. We did some incredible things and I am really proud of all that.
Jerry: That's great. Is there a 'but' in there?
Nicholas: No.
Jerry: Okay.
Nicholas: No.
Jerry: So, what's so hard about letting it go?
Nicholas: Getting hamstrung like that.
Jerry: What do you mean?

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Nicholas: By a cap table.
Jerry: So it's like sticking in your craw, this notion that it was a damn cap table problem.
Nicholas: Yes. It's like you are running a race and the rules say, "No yellow shoes." You
win the race, but they were like, "No, there were no yellow shoes allowed." And
you are like, "Yes, but I won the race." We were the best people, we were the best
contestants.
Jerry: So, it feels unfair.
Nicholas: Yes. It feels like we got robbed.
Jerry: So, you made a mistake.
Nicholas: Yes.
Jerry: To me, the mistake was simply this; you took capital under the wrong
circumstances, and you could never get out from under the structure that you put
yourself into.
Nicholas: No. That was the delusion.
Jerry: So, take me back in time. Take me back to when you took that deal. Did you have
a choice?
Nicholas: Yes, we had a choice.
Jerry: So, why did you take these terms from this investor?
Nicholas: It was on the table and it was one of those things, you know, when we talked to
one of the advisors from our accelerator; you know, he was just like, "Take the
money that's on the table guys." We had been out for a while, we got bounced, we
got late stage in the DD with a deal we really did want, but then another company
in this space blew up during our DD, so we lost that deal.
This one came along next and we didn't know a lot about the fund; there wasn't a
lot of information about the fund. We did some DD, but we liked the guys and we
felt like it was good working relationship, we were aligned, and by that point, we
were just way more interested in doing some work and then moving forward. So,
it was like, you know, let's just do this now and we'll work it out on the other side.
Jerry: So if you could go back in time and give yourself some advice, what would you
say?

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Nicholas: I would have pushed back on some of the terms because it felt very much like an
'us' versus 'them' where, they were like, putting down the terms. It felt like we
were pushing back on those terms because we were founders and we were like,
"No, we want our big stake." I wish I would have had a better visibility on the
knock-on effect from that, the pushback from the sense of like we will not get
funding after this. I would have pushed back on that. That was the big moment.
Jerry: What about a response perhaps to the mentor who said to you, take the money
that's being offered?
Nicholas: I don't know that I would necessarily push back on that because if you look at the
capital scene in London four years ago, it wasn't as advanced. There just weren't a
lot of options and I don't think we could have – I don't think we needed a – I don't
think we needed a completely different deal. I just think everybody at the table
needed to stop and think about what can we get funded next time.
So, I don't think we were wrong in taking the capital and I don't think his advice
was wrong. I mean, by now, the scene is totally changed and you are seeing more
founder-friendly and company-friendly term sheets. So I wouldn't necessarily go
back that way. I remember the meeting; it was the meeting where we said that
these terms are a bit rough and they said, the terms are the terms. I just think there
was another discussion to be had out there. You know, there was an unrepresented
party at that table who was going to be the next serious investor.
Jerry: So your advice would have been, make sure you create the conditions such that
another investor can come in?
Nicholas: Yes. My advice would have been, I understand the downside protections you are
looking for, but we need a way forward. We need a way forward later.
Jerry: I want you to imagine something right now. It's actually not going to be that big a
stretch; I want you to imagine there's 500 to 600, maybe 1000 to 2000
entrepreneurs listening to this podcast right now, and some percentage of them are
about to sign that first deal.
Nicholas: Ha!
Jerry: Yes. So, say again what you tell them.
Nicholas: I would tell them to think really long term about it. I would tell them to probably
take a step back, maybe take a weekend off, and really get away from, you know,
that rush of it's all happening and the fund is like, let's do this, and especially on a
seed deal, because you know, they are not huge deals. There's a lot of push to just
get it done, you know, by the lawyers, by your cofounders, by your friends and
family guys.

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It's like, "Come on guys, get it done, don't worry about it, you know, just push." I
would say, take a step back and really think about it not only this step, but also the
next two steps. Once you sign that deal, you know, there's going to be
implications.
Jerry: I think that's brilliant and beautiful mentoring advice. I'm going to expand it a
little bit and what I would say is, some things that I have said to entrepreneurs,
whether or not they have been clients over the years, one thing that I have often
said is to really think about long term when you are looking at potentially taking
an investment, to look at that person and say, "When the shit hits the fan, do I
want that person as my partner at the table?" Shit inevitably hits the fan.
Nicholas: Yes.
Jerry: Another thing I would say to people is, look, I want you to do – this isn't just
simple too, I want you to do a waterfall analysis because a lot of times what
happens is, people will take bad terms in order to get, for example, a good
valuation. I'd say, take a look and do a full waterfall analysis, project out not just a
year or two into the future, not just one or two capital raises, but project out as
best as you can, to that point in time where your cash flow will break even and
you are no longer raising capital. Analyze these terms to the point where you now
own some percentage of the company, maybe it's 10%, maybe it's 50%, maybe it's
5%. At that point in the future, five, six or seven years in the future, is that
position worth the pain and suffering that you are going to be going through?
Nicholas: Yes.
Jerry: So, when you are looking at those terms, when you are looking at that structured
relationship, when you are looking at taking that first deal, to the degree possible,
when you are doing this due diligence, when you are thinking about this investor
as a partner, think about that relationship long term. Think about that consequence
of the deal. No one is going to end up having perfect information. You could not
have predicted everything that happened.
But what I am hearing Nick is, without delusion, with a real kind of painful
poignant, clear sight, you can see that the deal that you took kind of impeded
things. It impeded the ability to raise additional capital, which then put you in a
difficult position going forward. That's really what I think the lesson is here,
which is, take your time, really understand what it is that you are signing up for.
Am I saying that right?
Nicholas: I would go further.
Jerry: Say more.

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Nicholas: I would say, you know, you are out there and I mean, raising capital, it's a
consuming process. I think even in the best, even in the best markets, even in the
best times, it still always is a consuming process. I think there's another part of
that process which I see I didn't go through, and it's like now I'm watching whole
cohorts of people not go through it themselves as well, which is getting that
independent advice onboard and not just an advisor.
So many people focus on advisor for their space. You know, they say, I'm in 3-D
printing, so I need a manufacturing advice or I'm in SAS so I need a SAS person.
I think, somebody who can really give you the feedback and the mirroring you
need about the terms and where you are going, that kind of person is not going to
come along easily and you have to find a person who likes you, who likes your
business and who wants to advice you early, who can pull you aside and say,
"Hey man, don't take these terms."
Or, at least the information that like, hey, these guys are known for this, you
know, or anything to where you are just not having blind negotiations. I mean, the
other – beyond that, I mean, I think the most painful part of it is the irrationality
of it. The irrationality of an investor to sit down like that and just say, okay, I'm
going to end the game. The other existing investors and the incoming investors
were beside themselves. They could not understand the position.
They were like, this doesn't make any sense. It's going to go to zero. Why is it
going to go to zero? I went and I talked to our attorney and I said, you know, in
the pref arrangement, what can I do and what can't I do? He said, "Well,
according to UK law, you can violate their consents if that is to save the business,
but you can't violate the property rights." There was all this energy late in the
game toward it, but I needed that energy early in the game.
I needed that insight, I needed a better picture of the investments scene, of the
investor. Those are the steps, so I was like I went and found the investor, but no,
now I need to do DD and actually I really need to dig in. By that point, you are
like you know, you just take the deal.
Jerry: When I brought your attention to this question of what kind of advice would you
give people, how did that feel?
Nicholas: It sucks because I don't want to be the martyr startup. It hurts because we were
doing something – you know, this came up a lot in Italy; it's like one of the
driving forces for our business. It was meant to do something good in the world.
We really rallied around that. There was a huge energetic focus around the
goodness of it.
We always thought that because it's something good and because it's so obvious
and because of all the hard work we are putting in, it will work out. We are not
going to get hung up by paperwork. And then, now to be sitting there, potentially

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talking to 10,000 entrepreneurs saying, man, you can get hamstrung by bullshit,
and everything you worked for will come falling over, because you didn't
prioritize everything.
Jerry: It's painful.
Nicholas: Yes, it is painful. It hurts. It hurts to go out like that and I think that's why it's hard
to let go of some pieces of it. If it wasn't that, we could just say, well, we failed –
Jerry: And that was it.
Nicholas: – and that was terrible and that was it.
Jerry: Right. I'm going to go back to your first question, which was, how do I process
this?
Nicholas: Yes.
Jerry: The medicine I am going to suggest is actually painful and bitter. The medicine I
am going to suggest is actually a little bit of an assignment. That is, I'd like you to
internalize the notion that perhaps, there is an entrepreneur out there who could
really benefit from hearing more of this story and could benefit from maybe, just
a couple of quick lessons.
Nicholas: Right.
Jerry: You could have benefited from hearing these things. You know, many years ago,
I was connecting with some memories of some really difficult things in my
childhood and I was working with the Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron. I said,
"Ani Pema, how do I deal with this? These feelings are so overwhelming." It was
memories of profound violence. She said, "I want you to sit in meditation and I
want you to think about all the children, past, present and future, who are going to
experience the same kind of violence." That was hard.
That was really hard, because in my grief, all I could feel was what had happened
to me. But a funny thing happened after a few months; I started to feel better and I
started to think about the ways in which I could possibly help stop this from
happening to someone else. You could argue that everything that I do as a coach
is kind of infused by that belief system that the way that we deal with pain of our
own lives is to use it as a means to reach out to someone else.
Now, what I'm asking or suggesting is hard, and you have a right to your own
grief and you have a right to care for yourself the way you feel best, but I will tell
you, from my own experience, as Pema Chodron told me from her experience,
that it helped me and it helps me every day. It's like, why do I do what I do at a

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bootcamp? Why do I do it in a podcast call or a coaching session? In a sense, it
reaches back in time and it helps me. Does that make any sense?
Nicholas: That's bringing up a lot. I mean, obviously we talked about 'The Shadow' and do
quite a lot of work on the shadow, you know, we chatted about a while ago, but I
think I may – I'm happy to deal with entrepreneurs, and you know, what's been
interesting is, you send out an email to 50,000 people, and we have the legacy of
being the first pop up cloud and now there's over 100. These people from around
the world have been ringing me up and some are very aggressive, you know, they
just want to shout at me and get the information, but some of the others, just take
very sensitive approaches.
It took me probably five of these phone calls before I realized that what they were
asking me was if they should continue themselves. They said, you guys were the
first and everything looked great from the outside. It's been really, really difficult
to say, you know, it wasn't a market problem, it was a capital problem. That has
involved telling them really honestly that I think you should keep going because I
believe in the space. They are like, "Well, how can you say that when this has just
happened?" It's like, because it was our fault. You realize that you are leading
people you don't even know about. That takes me back to 'The Shadow.' It's like,
I've done so much work around the shadow with my team and the shadow with
our customers.
You get blinded to the fact that you have investors and all of the moving pieces
have to work for them too. To have to sit and say to these guys, you know, like
there's no problem with the space and there's no problem with the sector; you
know, the problem was, we made a bad deal and then for whatever reason, we
didn't have the relationship we needed to have to fix it. That is why this happened.
Jerry: That's sounds incredibly brave to me.
Nicholas: Yes. Well, I mean, it's been amazing getting these calls from people and you sit
and you say, well, maybe my legacy in this business and in this space, we were
never going to be the Airbnb, we were never going to be the Uber. There's a
whole lot of people who have come after us and we have built a dominant logic
and we built a framework. It's hard to deny. It's like that thing and if you can do
anything you want in this world if you don't want to take credit for it. We are
causing the change and we are pushing the ripple. We have started a movement
and we have created something of power. You can't argue with that. You are like,
we just made some bad decisions and took ourselves out of the race.
Jerry: I am still going to argue, it's a very strong lesson for a lot of people out there. I'm
going to suggest, again gently, that one way for you to process what has happened
is to really take some time. I wouldn't rush into it, but take some time and maybe
write out some thoughts about what you learnt, what you do differently. If there's
a smart entrepreneur out there, and there are a lot listening, I think that they

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should reach out to Nick Russell and say, hey Nick, do you want to sit on our
board?
Nicholas: I'll do you one better Jerry, you can put my email on the notes for the podcast and
you know, anybody who wants to talk to me about it can drop me an email.
Jerry: I think that's a great idea. I think that's a very generous idea. So, with that, I think
we've got to wrap. I just want to thank you for coming on and telling your story
and sharing your story. My deep wish is that this sharing is part of the processing
and part of the healing for you. There's a grief here; it's not the same as losing a
loved one, but there's a grief here nonetheless. I think honoring that and
respecting that is a really important process here.
Nicholas: I'll say, this would have been – everything would have been much harder if we
hadn't done that work in Italy. I think, in a way, when I came away from that
work in Italy, what was realizing that – you know, I've gone through a lot of the
feelings way ahead. I mean, you have to wear the mask until the very last minute
and then you get to take it off, but I think that emotional intelligence that you talk
about in those lessons, and really the practice, what it did do was, it made me able
to handle this with my team.
I'm proud of the way I handled it with my team and with my investors and with
my shareholders. It's like, when the time came when shit got really hard, having
the emotional foundation to do it well, I think, made all the difference. So, I'd like
to thank you for that Jerry.
Jerry: You are welcome. I think what you just described is what we often talk about, is
resiliency.
Nicholas: Yes.
Jerry: Nothing we do can guarantee the success of our endeavors, but we can absolutely
enhance our capacity to be resilient and to withstand what happens. I think you
are a proof of that. Thank you so much, Nick, for coming on; I know a lot of
people are going to benefit from hearing this story. Thanks so much.
Nicholas: Great. Thank you Jerry.
**
So, that's it for our conversation today. You know, a lot was covered in this episode from links,
to books, to quotes, to images; so we went ahead and compiled all that, and put it on our site at
Reboot.io/podcast. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can find out about that on our site
as well. I'm really grateful that you took the time to listen. If you enjoyed the show and you want
to get all the latest episodes as we release them, head over to iTunes and subscribe and while
you're there, it would be great if you could leave us a review, letting us know how the show

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affected you. So, thank you again for listening, and I really look forward to future conversations
together.
[Singing]
“How long till my soul gets it right?
Did any human being ever reach that kind of light?
I call on the resting soul of Galileo,
King of night-vision, King of insight.”
[End of audio 0:51:28]
[End of transcript]