Daybreak - What happens when a failed founder goes job hunting?

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

On average, over 35 startups shut down every day in India. Employees move on to their next stint, but most founders find themselves unemployed, thanks to their high pay and a leadership attitude. Why? Think of it this way. What makes a good founder? Leadership, independence and a penchant for the unconventional. But what happens when these very strengths are seen as weaknesses when they're on the other side of the hiring table?Tune in. 

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcast, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

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Meet Akash Goyal. Two years ago, he raised $2 million in seed money as the CEO of Investment.com, a stock market investment and trading platform. Then a year later in 2024, investment had to shut shop. Now, Akash finds himself on the other side of the hiring table. And recruiters don't seem quite as impressed as you'd expect them to be.

In an interview with a Ken reporter Suprit Anupam, Akash spoke about his job hunting experience. He was one among 17 founders Suprit spoke to who were stuck in exactly the same vicious cycle. Endless resume drafts, radio silence from hiring panels, and interviews that turn into autopsies of their less than graceful exits. This is what many of those failed founders are dealing with in India's job market. market today. Now, India's home to the third largest startup ecosystem in the world. So it isn't entirely surprising that some of those startups, well, fail. It's bound to come with a boom and bus cycle. In fact, this cycle has shut down more than 30,000 startups in January 2023. And naturally

in the process, many founders have ended up being left in the lurch. Interestingly though, this isn't just an India problem. A Yale experiment in 2022 reported that people with founder experience receive 43% less callbacks than other applicants. Why? Well, think of it this way. What makes a good founder? Leadership, independence, a pension for the unconventional. But what happens when these very strengths are seen as weaknesses when they're on the other side of the hiring table?

Hello and welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Rahal Philippos and I don't chase the news cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague, Sikda Sharma and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Thursday, the 14th of August. Everything depends on how the startup ended. If it was a bad ending, your options shrink fast. Now, that's how a former founder sums up his job hunting experience. His fintech company was once expected to be the next poster challenge.

of the sector. It had all the makings of a breakout success. But then, in 2023, things took a turn for the worse and the company was sold off in a distressed sale. That's just one of the many startups that's had to close shop far too early. Just this year, 1800 startups have shut down between January and July. Unfortunately, that number significantly outpaces the rate at which startups have launched in this period. That number on the other hand is only about 460. The thing is, when a startup shuts down, employees have a relatively easier way out. With severances and other support systems in hand, they update their resumes, freshen up their LinkedIn profiles, and move on to the next thing. Founders, on the other hand, are forced to linger.

Awkward interviews and fading calls with investors prolong their time. And then they'll have to deal with a growing discontent between past glory and present obscurity. The fintech founder went on to tell us that it's harder to rebuild again and gain the trust of VCs. And of course, corporates hardly know what to do with failed founders. He says, while building a venture, you're touted as a hero. But after failure, you're either invisible or treated like a scammer. Even if the founders spend their initial years working non-stop, the stigma of failure basically taints their entire career.

We spoke to the co-founder of a company that had raised about $10 million from investors and had employed over 500 people at its peak. He told us that he hardly took even a week's break during the entire journey. Further, the ads, I ended up not just burning through all that money, I burnt myself out too. Far too many founders are fighting mental exhaustion. The Indian startup ecosystem may have matured in funding and hiring, but its tolerance for failure remains limited.

Founders are judged for what they could not achieve, even if the reasons were outside their control. More on the next segment. You see, the job market isn't built to look out for founders. There's no structured pathway for founders to take. And a co-founder we spoke to has a feeling that it's probably something to do with a founder ego perception. Okay, so maybe that perception is not entirely unfounded. You see, without a perspective flip, a failed founder is just that,

a person who is not able to implement their ideas as well as they should. have. Does that negate the kind of experience and drive they come with though? Well, of course not. But it's difficult for recruiters to see the same qualities that make good founders as a plus. Because working in a corporation requires one to be, well, comfortable with less money, less autonomy and more fitting in. A partner at a top executive search firm told us that founders tend to expect annual salaries exceeding 2.5 crore rupees. He elaborates that companies can offer closer to 50 lakh only. Basically, what founders think they're worth and what companies are willing to pay are two

entirely different numbers. The other huge point of contention is autonomy. Former founders are seen as too independent or too used to calling the shots. Ruchi Bhahtya, the founder of H.R. Guruul, a human resource consultancy, said, they've built and led companies. Going back to hierarchical structures is a challenge unless they're given full autonomy to drive change. But that kind of autonomy is rarely ever on offer. Most companies want team players, not visionaries.

They don't want to know at all. And they're certainly not looking for a jack of all trades. The only thing that might be giving founders a bit of relief is this. A few investors are ready to look favourably on the founders they once trusted. Stay tuned. Remember Akash Goel? He's the founder of Investment.com. And he was in quite the bind at the beginning of his job.

hunting journey. When he finally did get a job, it came as an offer from Varun Kona and Surin Sultania, the founders of Headout, an on-demand mobile marketplace. Now, Headout had backed Investment. Club in its early days. As early investors, they had witnessed its every triumphant setback. So when Akash started considering shutting down as an option, they were the first to remind him that the door at Headout was always open. And that's something that stayed with him. Some investment firms like Antler VC and incubators like Wycombinator run founder residency programs and co-founder matching programs to help founders find suitable partners to run their firms. Then there are dedicated platforms like coffee space, co-founders lab, start hawk and others, but most of them

are based outside India and have limited presence here. Unfortunately, this kind of a system is informal at best. So it seems at this point, the path for a former, founder in India is this. You fail, you go back to the drawing board and figure out something new, willing or unwillingly. And as a senior partner at OVC firm puts it, if you skip that step and start

with our introspection, you're likely to fail again. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website.

Today's episode was hosted by Rahil Filippos and edited by Rajiv Sien.