Ask HN: Stuck in transition: Is my startup doomed?
Hi,<p>currently transitioning from &quot;friendship student startup&quot; to &quot;serious and professional company&quot;. Facing some challenges:<p><i>Background</i><p>- Company was bootstrapped by 8 student founders (12,5% share)<p>- Since beginning (2011) we had steady growth of 30-50% a year in turnover and profits up to this year.<p>- There are three branches of products.<p>1) Talks &amp; Trainings about social media and IT-sec (40% turnover).<p>2) Contracting work e.g. creating websites and content (40%).<p>3) SaaS Solution for the public sector, we develop and sell (20%)<p><i>Recent Events</i><p>- Founders starting to work full-time, thus personnel cost exploding.<p>- Growth has come to a halt due to the loss of a big contracting client<p>- Money is getting shorter, salaries have been cut for everybody to reduce burn rate.<p><i>Current problems</i><p>- &quot;Democracy&quot;: on decisions founders are in, conflicts decided by vote (little unpopular decisions).<p>- No central management, everybody kinda manages himself, no real due diligence (unpopular tasks get delayed).<p>- no leading figure in the team, no one wants to &quot;be managed&quot; by a colleague perceived equal<p>- Diversification, products are unrelated (Contract work != talks and trainings != SaaS).<p>- Not a single product &#x2F; vision (many things done &quot;for the money&quot; without personal passion).<p>- Inconsistency in peoples commitment and attitude (motivated people looking for ideas and working hard vs. &quot;employees&quot; doing the bare minimum).<p>- everyone is employed but there are not enough tasks to fill everyones workday productively.<p>- Products are either to small (SaaS), dependent on third parties (public yearly contracts) or reaching the end of lifecycle (talks&amp;trainings)<p>- Salaries are way below industry level, If paid properly there would be only half the staff.<p>- Everyone is friends which makes it harder to let people go.<p>Have you ever been in a situation like this or witnessed these problems?