Introducing Soft Landing

A community for founders, business leaders and investors who’ve failed, learned and probably tried again.

Hey y’all! Welcome to Soft Landing - a community for founders, business leaders and investors who didn’t make it this time.

Let me introduce myself. I’m Rob Curtis, former CEO and Co-founder of Daylight, the first and only LGBTQ+ neobank in the USA.

Daylight wasn’t my first start-up, and it won’t be my last. It was, however, the largest and most impactful - to the world and to me personally. Our story ended prematurely when our core hypotheses weren’t validated by the market, so we closed the Daylight brand early.

Yes, we “failed”.

“Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.” - Richard Branson

The journey from being top-of-our-game to “the writing’s on the wall” was long, hard, confusing and stressful. And yet, like so many entrepreneurs facing similar situations, I found a distinct lack of fellowship through the close-down process which is, candidly, the median outcome for most start-ups. This is called venture after all.

I have spoken to many current and former founders about failure. And a few VCs too. I find this area deeply fascinating. I’ll be using Soft Landing to connect the dots between ventures- hearing first hand from founders about the things that worked and the things that didn’t. We’ll spend time talking about what happens at the end too. The dreaded “write-down”.

And yet, while ‘failure’ isn’t the outcome we as founders hope fore, I’ve heard incredible optimism in failure. A great sense of (gallows) humor, and some very touching, human stories. I also see the desire to get back in the game - a little stronger and more experienced than last time.

Why ‘Soft Landing’?

Failing can feel hard. Really hard. I’ve spoken with many many founders and a reasonable proportion of those founders have gone through long periods of depression, anxiety and impostor syndrome when their start-ups failed. Especially those who didn’t get their “soft landing” and were left without a sense of identity, a company to run, or an income.

Entrepreneurship is an ecosystem whose health is dependent on the health of all actors, founders, operators, VC, LPs.

Yet in conversation with many founders, I’ve discovered that VCs aren’t as strong at supporting failing companies as they are supporting growing companies.

Why spend time with a failing start-up when the opportunity cost is high? This makes sense to me from a reasonableness standpoint, from the perspective of the VC, of course. For the founders, the drivers of economic creation, this leaves them asking the same questions, feeling the same concerns, and searching for support that doesn’t exist.

I hope to build scaffolding and reinforcement to the ecosystem by filling this gap. I aim to create a space to:

1. Explore failures and lessons learned as an act of healing

2. Allow founders to create legacy by sharing what they learned

3. Learn about the mythical ‘Soft Landing’; who gets a soft landing? what does it entail? Is it enough to maintain a healthy ecosystem?

My goal: to ensure more founders feel support around the hardest moments.

What to expect?

Each week we’ll focus on a topic, for example, “The PR event”, “The Down Round” or “The end of the runway” and meet a founder, VC or operator that’s failed, sometimes spectacularly. We’ll learn what happened, what they learned, and what happened next.

Each story will be deeply personal and we’ll approach the topic with candor, authenticity, humor and compassion.

Subscribe and hear the stories of the forgotten start-up heroes. Maybe one day you’ll have your time in the hot seat.

Rob