Embrace your startup failure – the faster you fail, the better

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/10/07/embrace-your-startup-failure-the-faster-you-fail-the-better/

by jlees • 17 years ago

23 21 17 years ago

uk.techcrunch.com

marknutter2• 17 years ago

It takes a lot of effort to admit an idea you get really charged up about doesn't have any viability in the marketplace. Interesting article; failing is a good thing most of the time.

elblanco• 17 years ago

We are dealing with the aftermath of this in my company right now. Our former CTO, though a brilliant researcher, was absolutely not in touch with the needs of our clients. He treated the business as an extension of his previous R&D work and rather than focusing on commercializing the research and with a focus on customer requirements...which can be boring, like interfacing with large legacy data sources, he focused on the next cool and unproven researchy thing.

He's been gone for 6 months and we are still digging ourselves out of the crater he tossed us into.

Amazingly, the next release of our software post-CTO, which, now that the reigns were off, was designed to address very outstanding customer requirements, resulted in our first break-even quarter and our first cash flow positive month in the company's history. But we should have been at that point a year and a half ago.

Lesson to self: sometimes viability comes not from a cool idea, but from how that idea is packaged.

raquo2• 17 years ago

Critical reasoning is not failure.

Murkin• 17 years ago

And what if they did go on, changing their product and target audience while developing ?

Like many others, who started with an exciting idea but ended up with (a completely different yet) exciting product.

jlees2• 17 years ago

The thing is that these guys are already part of a company with a different product and revenue stream. This was kind of a 'what happens if we change our product and audience' exercise, and fortunately, instead of spending months wasting money to find out it wouldn't fly, they spent a few days. I guess if they weren't already doing other stuff, soldiering on and seeing what happened would be an option - provided you have some way of paying your rent while doing so.

messel4• 17 years ago

Ohhh, that sheds more light on the quick nix. Thanks jlees.

messel4• 17 years ago

Looks like you and I had a similar thought at the same time Murkin, but jlees explained their decision making just as fast.

messel4• 17 years ago

Is it possible that Sam Collins failed at failure? What if he and his team could have re-purposed their modular utilities/design for HTML5 support? There's still a great need for very high level utilities to aid domain experts in building specialized web services.

edw5192• 17 years ago

We went to Seedcamp, and spent three grueling days analysing our product.

Seems like we're in some kind of time warp here. I understand that with modern technology, things can happen faster, sometimes much faster. But how does spending 3 days determining that a business is not viable constitute a failure?

I really hate the whole "failure is OK" meme. Sure, we all understand that not everything goes perfectly all the time. But we also have those "Is this really worth it?" moments. For some of us, this happens all the time - the harder the project, the more often if happens. Sometimes all that separates real success from real failure is pushing through these moments, determined not to allow speed bumps to stop you.

I'm not suggesting that we will never fail or that we should never give up; sometimes that does make sense. I am suggesting that success is elusive until we adopt a personal policy of "failure is not an option".

OP was not a failure and not an example of this.

Failure is not OK.

messel4• 17 years ago

Failure is not an option, as in "Never give up, never surrender?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI5hi4c4y9k

edw5192• 17 years ago

I'm at work, so I can't access your link. I don't know what you were getting at.

I do know that if you think that failure is an option, the probability that you use that option increases dramatically. I'm not trying to use some new age self-help B.S. (well maybe just a little), I'm just suggesting that "state of mind" is critical when taking on difficult projects. Almost everyone I know who has accomplished anything big (including myself) had many opportunities to quit. Failure would have been easy. In fact, for a lot of software projects, there are many times when the whole thing looks hopeless, often right before a great demo or big sale.

I didn't care for OP's easy embrace of "failure" and tried to describe why. I hope that's what came across.

axod• 17 years ago

Total failure is not ok, but smaller failures are good - they teach us what to try next.

Loosing a few battles is fine, as long as you win the war. Loosing them teaches you how to win the war. :/

I agree though. 'thinking' about an idea for 3 days and deciding you don't want to do it != failure.

marknutter2• 17 years ago

It's not a "failure is OK meme", it's a "realism is OK" meme.

jlees2• 17 years ago

One of the interesting things is the pressure cooker effect of Seedcamp, plus it being an unusual venue to determine your idea is rubbish. There were plenty of businesses who would have benefited from going through Seedcamp to hone their proposition, meet investors, and potentially get investment from Seedcamp itself; this course space was taken up by a thought experiment. In an environment where everything else is shooting for the stars, admitting that the idea you turned up with isn't going to work does mark you out as a failure, and it's brave of them to have tried it out.

felipe• 17 years ago

Very well said. Besides, I don't see how someone can prove or disprove anything by attending a 3-day conference.

It seems to me that their product would cannibalize their own consulting business -- Which is a perfectly understandable reason to not pursue an opportunity. But I don't buy the "failure in 3 days" excuse, especially when they had some evidence that clients could be interested in such product.

adamBA• 17 years ago

I don't think he failed, I think he just realized that his idea was crap.

If you can chalk that up to a good learning experience and something that should be written about, then I guess every Tom, Dick and Harry should be Nobel Prize winning Pulitzer Prize waving success.

GavinB• 17 years ago

There's a big difference between an idea failing and a team failing.

To be more clear, maybe we should replace "fail early, fail often," with "test early, reject often." The point of the phrase is to get you to test your ideas as soon as possible, before you sink too much work into them.

The dichotomy isn't between "fail XOR succeed" but between "let it be tested XOR keep working until it's 100% complete."

hegemonicon• 17 years ago

Failure is more than ok - it's essential. There is literally no other way to learn how to do something than trial and error.

What's important to remember is that even though it's important, failure still has a cost - be it in lost money, lost opportunity, lost time, etc. You're trading something away in exchange for knowledge. You need to make sure you maximize the value of that transaction by making your failures as cheap as possible.

scotty79• 17 years ago

fail early, fail often ;-)

"[x] early, [x] often" is nice rule. Why not apply it to failure?

raquo2• 17 years ago

Because failure is not the purpose?

ALee• 17 years ago

As Nietzsche said, "...if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

The fundamental tension with all entrepreneurs is the willingness to go to the brink of the abyss for your idea, but also have the wherewithal to pivot or pull back. The choice between zombie company (with no high market potential) and starting another idea is tough, There are some ways to make the decision, but a lot of what makes you pull back or dive in seems determined by luck.

Embrace your startup failure – the faster you fail, the better

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