I remember seeing dozens of these “we’re shutting down” messages
during the dotcom crash. How many CEOs have written those notes, tears
rolling down, in the middle of the night with the door shut tight.
Years of dreaming, pumping people up only to end with a static HTML
page for the bloggers and press to mock… “welcome to the dead pool
bitches!”

I’m always sad to see entrepreneurs “shut it down,” but sometimes you
have to lose the battle to win the war. I’m certain that most of the
team at Wesabe learned more building–and shutting down–Wesabe then
they did in their entire lives before Wesabe.

For that, for the effort and for learning, I salute team Wesabe.
Congratulations on trying–that’s more than most folks ever do in
their lives.

Don’t stop believing, don’t stop dreaming.

Man I would love to have Marc Hedlund the CEO of Wesabe on This Week
in Startups to discuss what he learned–and how he is feeling. We need
to do an emergency episode.

Remember, these is no success like failure….

… and remember team Wesabe, you live in the arena: everyone else is
a mere spectator looking to be entertained while we live and die doing
this sh@#$%t. VCs place 25 bets at a time, we make one. We’re the
gladiators and they sell the tickets. We maim and destroy for a
living–they count money. Never forget who the killers are.

If any of the Gladiators at Wesabe need a desk and provisions, we’ve always got an empty one at HQ for you to camp out at.