#110 - Avni Patel Thompson and Kat Manalac

About this episode

<p><a href="http://avnipatelthompson.com/">Avni Patel Thompson</a> founded Poppy, which helped parents book the best caregivers. They went through the YC Winter 2016 batch and recently shut down. Avni asked to come on the podcast to talk about what the process of shutting down was like.<br><br><a href="https://twitter.com/katmanalac">Kat Manalac</a> is a&nbsp;partner at YC.<br><br>You can find Avni on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/APatelThompson">@APatelThompson</a> and Kat at <a href="https://twitter.com/katmanalac">@KatManalac</a>.<br><br>The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - <a href="https://twitter.com/craigcannon">@CraigCannon</a>.<br><br>***</p><p><b>Topics<br><br></b>00:35 - Kat’s intro<br><br>01:15 - Avni’s intro<br><br>2:15 - When did it become clear that scaling Poppy wasn’t working?<br><br>5:50 - Experiments Avni tried with Poppy<br><br>9:55 - The last six months of runway<br><br>13:25 - Choosing to shut Poppy down<br><br>17:25 - Pivot or shut down?<br><br>20:10 - Who did Avni have these hard conversations with?<br><br>24:35 - Communicating with investors during the process of shutting down<br><br>31:20 - How does Avni feel since shutting down Poppy?<br><br>38:30 - Tying self-worth to your accomplishments and how it feels after shutting down<br><br>39:30 - “This is what trying looks like.”<br><br>44:00 - The effects of having raised money<br><br>46:00 - Starting to think about what’s next<br><br>49:00 - Struggling with unstructured nothing<br><br>49:45 - Kindness<b><br></b></p>