A short, fictional walk through the six weeks where your startup raised forty million dollars and then realigned you out of a job. The funding TechCrunch post. The all-hands with the confetti slide. The "we are a family" email. The equity that a down round quietly zeroed. This is still a layoff, dressed in better fonts. You do not win it by clapping at the right moments. You handle the next real thing, in order. It takes about five minutes.
How it plays
You make one decision at a time, the same real ones the situation actually hands you. A few quiet meters track how you are holding up and move as you go. There are no points and no winning, just where you end up and what to do next. About five minutes.
WHO YOU ARE TODAY
Same situation, different starting hand. Some of these make the good endings genuinely harder to reach.
PICK A TONE
Unhinged, the same beats with the satire off its leash, is part of the full plan.
This is a story, not advice. The company, the round, and the forty million are invented. The decisions are not, and the real versions of them, the WARN math, the severance you may still owe yourself, the COBRA fork, are in the guides and tools when you want them.