It's relatively common for startups fail.
In fact, three out of every four venture-backed startups fail, according to a recent report by The National Venture Capital Association.
But that reality doesn't make it any easier on entrepreneurs, who likely poured their heart and soul into a product, to watch their company fail.
"It feels as if you have just lost your child," self-proclaimed "failed entrepreneur" Harsh Snehanshu writes on Quora. "You try to look back at it, and can't restrain from feeling sad about it, about the amount of passion you have invested that didn't bear fruits, about the grand dreams that were trampled in a snap of a moment, about the convincing promises you made to your parents which didn't keep true. It's depressing, to say the least."
But at the same time, Snehanshu writes, it feels powerful. That's because moving on from a failed product can be liberating, as you can focus your energy toward something new.
After his startup shut down, he traveled for a bit, explored other entrepreneurial ideas, and even wrote a book about his failure.
His biggest takeaway: "an entrepreneur might fail, the the entrepreneur in him never dies."
Head on over to Quora to read more first-hand accounts of what it feels like to run a startup that fails.
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