But just wondering if this ruins you financially or what happens if you're paying a mortgage / have a family etc? I really have no idea.
Thankfully not even asking for a friend, just curious.
Unless they’ve over leveraged personally they won’t have debt. In fact many will have made money through sales along the way. I worked for one founder who cashed out and got a Porsche… everyone else lost money. He disappeared though since he burned so many bridges.
You go get a job to make ends meet or you start another company generally. Unless you’re super high profile it’s not really going to tarnish your image and even then someone like Neumann still got investors again.