创业公司什么时候该关门大吉

无用功

    另一个不妙的迹象是，你不断向公司投入更多的资金和时间，但公司毫无向好的趋势。

    迈克尔•帕卢奇花了三年时间打造纽约点对点就业市场Solvate，但公司总是缺乏良好的增长势头，不能持续吸引风投。事实上，这家公司增长平平，去年底已关门歇业，没有再寻求新一轮融资。

    “我们太超前市场了，”帕卢奇说。“在互联网上以特定的方式交易某些类型的工作对于人们来说有点太超前了。我相信我们试图实现的东西在将来某个时候必将成为现实。”

    与此形成对比的是，帕卢奇目前是Slooh的共同创始人兼董事长，这家小公司已经盈利，公司将望远镜连接到互联网上，播报像月食、日食等天文现象。公司正处于缓慢而稳定上升的阶段。他说：“它不适合风投模式。我们预计它会每年一点点好转。”

新障碍

    对于波士顿Go Gaga公司的创始人吉尔•卡特莱特而言，这场经济衰退就像横亘在眼前的一堵墙。她在2007年创建了这家人体工程学妈咪包公司，公司很快就盈利了，分销渠道遍布美国、加拿大和澳大利亚，业务合作伙伴包括Babies R Us、Diapers.com、亚马逊（Amazon.com）和eBags等。

    但到了2010年下半年，卡特莱特平均每个月有3家独立门店（因为破产）而关门。凭借虚拟供应链和极低的管理成本，她本可以大幅缩减规模，蹒跚前行。但去年10月，她最终决定暂停生产。

    “和很多创业者一样，我希望我创立的公司总能保持活力，不断前进，”她说。“我发现自己陷入了经营公司的细枝末节之中，而不是继续扩张。这不是我想要的自己。”

    与此类似，费城Reproduct的首席执行官帕特里克•菲兹杰拉德对公司的前景也曾经非常乐观。这家公司回收贺卡，制成办公家具和地毯。直到他遇到美国邮政（U.S. Postal Service），了解到如果要降低客户回寄贺卡用于回收的邮资，可能需要美国国会表决。不调低邮资，他的业务模式就行不通。

    “如果行业老大说：‘不成，这事没戏’。这时，你只能说：‘好吧，行不通，那就算了’，”菲茨杰拉德说。现在在宾夕法尼亚大学（University of Pennsylvania）沃顿商学院（The Wharton School）担任讲师的菲茨杰拉德过去曾成功创立过Recyclebank等公司。“如果你承认失败，你会说，‘我会关掉这家，把它作为下一家公司的积累。’如果你没有汲取任何教训，那就是在浪费时间。”（财富中文网）

You're pushing a boulder uphill

    Another bad sign: you keep sinking more money and time into a venture -- and it doesn't get any easier.

    Michael Paolucci spent three years building Solvate, a New York-based peer-to-peer labor market, but kept falling short of the momentum and growth he needed to continue attracting venture capital. Instead, the company showed flat growth and was shuttered late last year rather than seeking another round of funding.

    "We were ahead of the market," Paolucci says. "It's a little early for people to be transacting in certain ways for certain kinds of work through the network. I think what we tried to achieve is going to exist at some point."

    By contrast, Paolucci is now co-founder and chairman of Slooh, a small, profitable company that connects telescopes to the Internet, broadcasting celestial events like lunar and solar eclipses. This company is on a slow-and-steady upward trajectory. "It doesn't fit the venture mold. We see it getting a little bit better every year," he says.

New or newly discovered roadblocks

    For Jill Cartwright, founder of Boston-based Go Gaga, the recession came on like a brick wall. She'd launched the ergonomic diaper bag company in 2007, and it quickly became profitable, with distribution channels throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia and business partners like Babies R Us, Diapers.com, Amazon.com, and eBags.

    But by the last half of 2010, Cartwright was losing an average of three independent boutiques a month, due to bankruptcy. With a virtual supply chain and minimal overhead, she could have dramatically scaled back and kept limping along. Instead, she decided to halt production last October.

    "Like so many entrepreneurs, I wanted the business I created to be something dynamic that was constantly evolving," she says. "I found myself so bogged down in the nuts and bolts of running the business that I wasn't growing it. This wasn't what I had envisioned for myself."

    Similarly, CEO Patrick FitzGerald was optimistic about the prospects of Reproduct, a Philadelphia-based company that recycled greeting cards into office furniture and carpets. That is, until he met with the U.S. Postal Service and learned that it would take an act of Congress to reduce the postage required for customers to return used cards for recycling. Without a lower postal rate, his business model fell apart.

    "When the 800-pound gorilla says, 'No, it's never going to happen,' you have to say, 'Okay it's done, it's a failure,' " says FitzGerald, now a lecturer at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, who previously founded successful companies including Recyclebank. "If you embrace failure, you say, 'I'm going to shut this down and I'm going to use it for my next company.' You wasted your time if you didn't learn anything from it."