Stop Building a 'Situationship' Business: Real Startup Advice for Founders
By Nina — I'm the friend who tells you what you need to hear about your situationship. ·
Look, I spend forty hours a week in PR, and the rest of my time listening to my friends cry over guys who won’t commit. If there’s one thing I’ve learned—both in the boardroom and over $18 margaritas in Williamsburg—it’s that human beings have a pathological need to romanticize things that aren’t actually working.
We do it with bad partners, and we definitely do it with startups.
I see so many of you treating your early-stage venture like a situationship. You’re pouring your savings and your sanity into a "passion project" that’s clearly not giving you anything back, but you’re too scared to break it off because you’ve already invested six months of your life. You’re waiting for the business to show up, to change, to finally commit to being profitable.
Spoiler alert: If it’s not working by now, it’s not just a rough patch. It’s the business model. Let’s clean up your act.
Stop Confusing 'Busy' with 'Building'
You know that friend who says they’re "talking to someone," but they haven’t been on a date in three weeks? That’s you, but with your product roadmap. You’re spending all day tweaking fonts on your landing page, obsessing over your Instagram grid, and networking at events where no one actually buys anything.
That isn’t building a company. That’s procrastination in a blazer.
In PR, if a campaign doesn’t move the needle on client sentiment or sales, it’s a failure. Period. I don’t care how beautiful the press release is. Your startup needs the same level of cold-hearted scrutiny. Before you spend another hour on a feature nobody asked for, ask yourself: Does this activity directly result in a dollar sign? If the answer is no, stop doing it. You’re not a founder yet; you’re just a hobbyist with a very expensive to-do list.
Validate Your 'Ick' Factor
We talk a lot about "market validation," but let’s talk about the gut check. You know that tiny, nagging feeling you get when you’re pitching to an investor or trying to onboard a user, and you feel like a total fraud? The one you push down with three espressos?
That’s not imposter syndrome. That’s your intuition telling you that your value proposition is garbage.
Stop ignoring the 'ick.' If you feel embarrassed telling people what your company actually does, or if you feel like you have to over-explain the problem your solution solves, your product is a situationship. It’s not meeting the market’s needs, and you’re just trying to convince yourself otherwise. Pivot, iterate, or kill it. Don’t waste your prime years trying to make something fetch when it clearly never will.
Stop Dating Your Investors
There is a weird, codependent power dynamic that happens when founders start chasing VC money like it’s a toxic ex who finally texted back. You’re changing your whole identity to fit their thesis. You’re performing. You’re acting like the company they want, rather than the company that is actually sustainable.
Newsflash: If you have to lie about your burn rate or your user retention to get a term sheet, you’re just setting yourself up for a messy breakup. When the money runs out—and it will—you’ll be left with a business you don’t even recognize, struggling to keep the lights on for investors who never really cared about the mission in the first place.
Build for the customer, not the check. If you have a real product that solves a real problem for real people, the investors will come. And if they don’t? You still have a business that makes money. That’s the only form of "freedom" that actually matters in this industry.
The Breakup is Freeing
I know, I know—you’re "all in." You’ve told your parents, you’ve quit your job, you’ve put it on your LinkedIn. Walking away feels like admitting defeat.
But let me tell you something I tell everyone who comes to me: there is nothing more powerful than knowing when to walk away. Real growth doesn’t come from dragging a dead horse across the finish line. It comes from having the self-respect to say, "This isn’t what I signed up for," and moving on to something that actually has potential.
Your startup is not your identity. It’s just a project. If it’s failing, let it go. You are twenty-something (or thirty-something!) in the middle of a city that never sleeps; you have the energy and the capacity to build something that doesn’t require you to sacrifice your peace of mind or your bank account for a "maybe."
Stop wasting your time on a business that doesn’t love you back. You deserve a venture that actually works, and honestly? You’re smart enough to build one.
Still stuck in a cycle of "what if" with your business model? Are you just scared to admit that your baby is ugly? Hit me up in the DMs or comment below—let’s actually talk about why you’re still holding on. I promise not to sugarcoat it.