The job markets awful, so I took a contract way below my normal rate to as a "prove it" contract for a startup with the promise of equity and better pay if I helped them launch their product and raise capital. In 4 weeks I built out their entire analytics system (they were flying blind), I redid all of their positioning and messaging, conversion optimized their website and user onboarding process (they didn't even have an easy way to contact them, no demo video, typos in their welcome e-mail - had to help them setup an actual sequence as well, no testimonials or social proof before me), helped implement a qualification process for sales - they were just taking every meeting request before me, got them launched on G2 and Sourceforge, did a ProductHunt and helped them rank #3 for the day they launched, in 3 weeks got over 7,000+ signups to the platform, over 40k visitors to the website, took their demo video viral on X, tripled social media followers, over 300+ meeting requests, 53 meetings booked with qualified high value potential customers potentially worth millions in future revenue. Oh, and setup AI analytics to unmask their direct traffic, helped them build out an automation workflow to cold e-mail the people who were visiting the website the most without signing up, and setup Google ads, X ads, and Reddit ads and was driving considerable top of funnel traffic with a stupidly small budget. Had to create the creatives myself as well without any help or contractors. My thanks? They canceled the contract after the 4 week trial. Told me they under estimated how much work it would take to manage all these new users I just brought them, and they needed the budget they were paying me for hiring support people and devrel because now they had too many users. Ironically I have experience with devrel but they didn't want me to do it for some reason and hired some part-time person in Brazil. They were paying me about 1/3 my normal rate. I didn't even get a chance to use the full ad budget I was supposed to be getting. I can't help but feel used and abused at this point. Most marketing teams would have taken 3-6 months to achieve what I achieved in 4 weeks alone with no resources or budget. These guys now have everything they need to go close a series A, and I barely got paid enough to even cover my rent for a month. Obviously, it was on me for taking a risk, I know that, but the sting doesn't hurt any less. I built them a marketing foundation, and they're now mostly going to turn everything off or put it on autopilot with no one who knows how to fly the plane. Nearly 20 years in marketing, and no matter how well I perform it just doesn't seem to matter anymore. I always lose the contract or the job at this point, and it's been like this since the pandemic started and seems to only be getting worse. Please tell me there's still hope for marketing as a career? Are y'all seeing similar situations right now? Wtf is going on with this market? Why are founders so out of touch?