The startup trap that kept this longevity app founder stuck

Brent Franson is the CEO of Death Clock. Courtesy of Death Clock Death Clock CEO Brent Franson said startups can get stuck in a phase he calls "slow failure." He shut down his startup and threw out years' worth of code to build Death Clock, a consumer-health product. When a startup isn't viable , Franson says, founders should fully pivot rather than try to patch it. Brent Franson spent four years building a mental-health app that users liked, but that didn't ultimately work as a business. The product wasn't an obvious flop. It had enough promise, he said, to make further rounds of changes seem worthwhile — the trap of something that seemed "pretty good," though ultimately isn't viable. "Mediocrity is so dangerous," Franson said.