1) Reflect on your ability to change and influence your work environment. You probably can influence the company a lot more than you think. Don't play the victim card; roll up your sleeves and start building the culture you want to work in. If you're a co-founder, that's your job anyway. If you're an early employee, you have the credibility and visibility, and people will follow your lead.
2) Establish well-being as one of your core values. Given you already had an exit, I'd imagine you're past the ramen-profitable stage, so your focus now should be on scaling fast, and building a sustainable long-term strategy. Long work hours, burnout and a toxic environment are sure ways to crash a company.
3) Give yourself a deadline, and work your ass off till then. If you're proud of the work you did to help turn things around and still wasn't able to make a dent, then it's time to move on, and with your head up. If you can't change how the company operates, you can always change who do you work for.
OTOH, if you don't love the job enough, OR if you don't have the energy to do #1 and #2, then I'd suggest you quit or take an unpaid leave of absence, and use the time to disconnect and recharge. You have plenty of runway, so you can afford to take a sabbatical. If you want to keep yourself intellectually challenged you may want to go back to school or something (given travelling the world is unfortunately not an option right now).
Last, but most important of all: seek help. Don't underestimate the impact of burnout, and assume it'll go away one day. It's serious, and may have long-lasting impact if you don't pay attention, and address the root-cause. Nothing is more important than your mental health. Feel free to ping me if you need a stranger to chat.
- get the liberty of hiring people for your own team
- get flexible work hours allowing you to show up when you want to and pick the problems you'd like to solve
Also, unless you haven't done so already, get/see a financial advisor to make sure you don't blow through 10M in a few years. Do something like building an apartment building (low income or not), invest in providing a basic service that'll always be around and will make you money for decades to come, etc.
I don't spend much at all and have a finance background so will try to invest some of them myself.
You are at high risk for overestimating your investing odds, getting a few lucky wins and getting hooked, and losing it all.
Instead research the FIRE community and strongly consider dollar cost averaging into a market fund like VTSTAX and the S&P 500.
You will, statistically, never be able to beat the market average over a long time period. And if you’re mid-20’s then you are looking at a 50+ year time horizon for your investments. That’s amazing!
If prudently invested in market funds, it is likely that your 10MM can grow to a very significant multiple of that over the next 40 years. You should be able to stop full time work now and live on the interest.
But you have to absolutely swear to yourself to never touch the principle under any circumstances.
Take a day off? A week?
Work in a different direction from what you've done last 3 months?
You don't feel it in your 20s unless you pay attention, but later on the overwork will take its toll no less than alcoholism or heavy drug use.