The worst moments as a startup founder aren’t in the pitch decks.

They’re in the 2am Slack messages. The emergency board calls. The conversations you never wanted to have.

I’ve been there. Multiple times.

When my top game designer at Next Games resigned right before our beta launch, I stared at my laptop for an hour. Not planning. Just processing. We’d built everything around their vision for the game.

When our massive IP licencing deal got killed 48 hours before signing, after 6 months of negotiations, we had to come up with a backup plan. Which we didn’t have.

But nothing compared to the payroll crisis I experieced in my first startup.

14 days. 11 employees. Bank account running on fumes.

I remember doing the math on a napkin at 3am. If we cut salaries by 50%, we’d survive 6 weeks. If we let go of half the team, maybe 3 months. Every calculation felt like betrayal.

You know what saved us? Not some brilliant strategy. Not a last-minute investor.

It was admitting we were drowning.

I called every single employee. Told them exactly where we stood. No sugarcoating. No false optimism. Just truth.

Half the team offered to defer salaries. I went out to find investors and found an angel who’d been burned by similar situations. He invested because he believed in us.

We made payroll. Barely.

Here’s what those moments taught me:

People leave. Deals die. Money runs out. But founder conviction? That’s the only thing you actually control.

The worst that can happen isn’t failure. It’s giving up before you’ve exhausted every option.

Those 2am moments still come. As an investor now, I see them in founders’ eyes during “everything’s great” moments.

My advice? Stop pretending it’s great. Start admitting what’s breaking.

Your team already knows anyway.