"How long can I continue making very little to no money?" startup founder Erin Hopmann wrote in a recent blog post. "How long can I feel ok with employing people at far less than they’re worth?"
Most founders have probably had similar thoughts at one point or another, but it's rare to hear these concerns expressed in public. The typical founder aims to present the company in the best possible light to attract investors, press and ultimately, consumers. But after realizing that their startup's resources were dwindling, Hopmann and her co-founder Jess Lybeck decided to take the opposite approach.
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Two years ago, Hopmann and Lybeck launched Dabble, a Chicago-based education startup that promised to give busy locals an easy way to teach or take speciality classes on subjects ranging from introductory pottery to using data-visualization tools. They raised about $500,000 from two angel rounds, and received a fair amount of press coverage from Chicago media outlets and technology websites. What's more, sales are now on track to double in 2013 from the year before, according to Hopmann.
Yet when it came time to try raising a Series A round, Hopmann and Lybeck struggled to find willing investors. Perhaps it can be chalked up to the much-talked-about Series A crunch, or the fact that Dabble hasn't yet proven its business model to be profitable. Whatever the case may be, the two founders have since been forced to cut their staff down from seven to three, and stop paying themselves a salary.
Late last month, Hopmann and Lybeck took the unusual step of creating a new website called 30 Days of Honesty to detail their day-to-day struggles and personal doubts about running Dabble. Each day, they write openly about debates over raising prices so they can take a greater cut, asking readers for marketing tips and questioning how long they'll feel comfortable committing to the company.

The goal of the blogging campaign, according to Hopmann, is to turn the startup's troubles into a new kind of publicity engine that can get the attention of new customers and investors.
"The dream would be that our knight in shining armor comes along with a belief in the business to fund it," Hopmann told Mashable in an interview last week. "I think knowing [that option is] a stretch for 30 days, the other hope is awareness: People that use Dabble love it, so we just need more eyeballs."
During the first few days of the 30 Days initiative, Hopmann said she received messages from existing customers who were previously unaware of the startup's struggles, and who said they would be willing to pay more to keep it afloat. She also received messages from other entrepreneurs who offered business suggestions. When we spoke with Hopmann, she said she had just gotten off the phone with an investor who wanted to set up a meeting for this week — although there's no guarantee that it will lead to the big funding round Dabble is looking for.
Hopmann said the decision to launch the 30 Days blog was inspired by a recent Inc article about the psychological toll of starting a company and, before that, an anonymous Tumblr called "My Startup Has 30 Days to Live," which went viral this summer. Each of these has helped spark conversations about the true costs of running startups — something Hopmann also hopes to accomplish with the 30 Days project.
"There are so many side conversations we have among our peers and people I've become friends with through startup circles that don't come out," she said. "I get their newsletter and everything seems great, but wow, I just talked to them the other day, and she's thinking of quitting because it's been three years and so painful."
Hopmann now finds herself at a similar point. While she insisted Dabble won't run out of money anytime soon, thanks to cost-cutting efforts, Hopmann admitted she will probably move on to a new job if business doesn't turn around, and the company can't raise additional funds.
"The question of hitting zero in the bank account is not as much of a concern as a slow death," Hopmann said, noting that her staff would be forced to rely on other sources of income, and devote less time and attention to Dabble. "If it's a month from now, and there's not some hope for taking pay out of Dabble by the end of the year, I will go and seek out something that is a source of income."
If that happens, she certainly wouldn't be the first to do so. As it happens, the founder behind the anonymous "My Startup Has 30 Days to Live" Tumblr wrote a final post this weekend revealing that he had taken a new job "firmly outside the startup ecosystem" after failing to save his company.
"At some point in your life, entrepreneur or not, you will fail and do so spectacularly. You’re not alone," the founder wrote. "It’s going to hurt more than anything you’ve ever felt before. It will try to destroy you. But it won’t."
Image: Dabble