If you've been working for a year and a half and still haven't launched, that, to me, indicates that your product will almost certainly need another year of iteration at least before it starts making any money. Probably 50-90% of the work that you've done so far will be scrapped when you figure out what your customers really want. (yeah, everybody thinks they're different, but they're not)
Combining that with "we're about to run out of runway", and this results in a really bad picture.
I don't know what exactly is right for you - you'll have to make that judgement call yourself - but if I were in your place, unless there is some really significant information you're not telling us in this post, I would revise your estimate of "I 'm at a startup in New York that has, in my opinion, an excellent product that is near launch" - you're at a startup that has a product that's probably 1-3 years away from being able to make significant amounts of money, unless you have a crazy awesome sales force that can sell ice to an eskimo.
In view of that, you should definitely take every step to plan for the likely failure of this start-up. If you've built a product that needs to be perfect from day one, you've built a product that's probably going to fail (and if that's an inherent requirement of the product category, then it's not a good product category for a start-up).
So, looking at your specific questions:
1) Assume it won't launch at all. What can you salvage? Well, actually, you do have a lot to show for it. If you worked at a large corp and built a product for them that they never launched, you wouldn't have "nothing to show for it". You must have learned a lot on the way. I know (from personal experience) it's hard to be positive when your startup is falling apart, but it's really a matter of perspective. Discuss this with a positive, can-do friend who'll help you bring out the positives if you ever need to interview.
2) See earlier comments. You can't recover from that damage - you need to launch and iterate. If you can't launch and iterate, you're dead in the water.
3) That's all a matter of how you sell yourself. I would suggest looking for other start-ups to join though. They definitely won't look down on your experience as "worthless". Some corporate departments might - but those are probably not the ones you want to work at anyway. Others are desperate to hire "entrepreneurial people". If you sell your experience right you should be able to make it worth your while.
4) That's not really related to the rest of the post. Forget about that for now and focus on the cataclysm unfolding around you. You'll need all your wits on the present moment.
PS: Feel free to come hang around in #startups on freenode for further discussion of this.
If you've been working for a year and a half and still haven't launched, that, to me, indicates that your product will almost certainly need another year of iteration at least before it starts making any money. Probably 50-90% of the work that you've done so far will be scrapped when you figure out what your customers really want. (yeah, everybody thinks they're different, but they're not)
Combining that with "we're about to run out of runway", and this results in a really bad picture.
I don't know what exactly is right for you - you'll have to make that judgement call yourself - but if I were in your place, unless there is some really significant information you're not telling us in this post, I would revise your estimate of "I 'm at a startup in New York that has, in my opinion, an excellent product that is near launch" - you're at a startup that has a product that's probably 1-3 years away from being able to make significant amounts of money, unless you have a crazy awesome sales force that can sell ice to an eskimo.
In view of that, you should definitely take every step to plan for the likely failure of this start-up. If you've built a product that needs to be perfect from day one, you've built a product that's probably going to fail (and if that's an inherent requirement of the product category, then it's not a good product category for a start-up).
So, looking at your specific questions:
1) Assume it won't launch at all. What can you salvage? Well, actually, you do have a lot to show for it. If you worked at a large corp and built a product for them that they never launched, you wouldn't have "nothing to show for it". You must have learned a lot on the way. I know (from personal experience) it's hard to be positive when your startup is falling apart, but it's really a matter of perspective. Discuss this with a positive, can-do friend who'll help you bring out the positives if you ever need to interview.
2) See earlier comments. You can't recover from that damage - you need to launch and iterate. If you can't launch and iterate, you're dead in the water.
3) That's all a matter of how you sell yourself. I would suggest looking for other start-ups to join though. They definitely won't look down on your experience as "worthless". Some corporate departments might - but those are probably not the ones you want to work at anyway. Others are desperate to hire "entrepreneurial people". If you sell your experience right you should be able to make it worth your while.
4) That's not really related to the rest of the post. Forget about that for now and focus on the cataclysm unfolding around you. You'll need all your wits on the present moment.
PS: Feel free to come hang around in #startups on freenode for further discussion of this.