Five minutes prior to my final chemical engineering exam, the CTO of our startup sent out his final work with his resignation. Beaten to apathy by the compounding competing pressures between his fiancé threatening to leave him and his struggle to lead this startup, he chose his woman.

I admire him and I respect him for making that decision. My only hope is that he does not regret the decision later on and resent his wife for having pulled him from this opportunity.

On the other hand, him giving up on the team at the last minute with an unfinished product when we are desperate to complete it, is unfair. I understand that he is not currently in a position to lead us with our development efforts, and that the promises we exchanged cannot be realized because of the change in circumstances, and I empathize with him, but it still hurts to see our words fall short.

To clear my mind, I went off with the roomies to see the sunset at the local prairie and get some fresh air. I laughed as hard as I could at everything I could to disarm my mounting desperation. I started to see the end of what my team and I had worked on so diligently over the past six grueling months. It began to eat me up inside, I felt like I had been robbed and that the show was coming to an end.

But the next morning I woke up and I was ready to take on the challenge of moving forward without a CTO. I called my departing CTO to make his departure official and clean. We hung up on amicable terms, I was impressed.

I took a contemplatively deep breath and hung in that moment of uncertainty for a while… then I called our exceptionally talented intern. This was an opportunity for him to step up.