Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

Sahil Lavingia
Marker
Published in
14 min readFeb 7, 2019

--

Medium no longer allows this article to be read easily, so I’ve moved this article to be available directly on my website. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Credit: Zdenek Sasek/iStock/Getty Images Plus

In 2011, I left my job as the second employee at Pinterest — before I vested any of my stock — to work on what I thought would be my life’s work.

I thought Gumroad would become a billion-dollar company, with hundreds of employees. It would IPO, and I would work on it until I died. Something like that.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Now, it may look like I am in an enviable position, running a profitable, growing, low-maintenance software business serving adoring customers. But for years, I considered myself a failure. At my lowest point, I had to lay off 75 percent of my company, including many of my best friends. I had failed.

It took me years to realize I was misguided from the outset. I no longer feel shame in the path I took to get to where I am today — but for a long time, I did. This is my journey, from the beginning.

--

--

Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Sahil Lavingia
Sahil Lavingia

Responses (237)