When I was a postgraduate, I constantly read the success stories of entrepreneurs citing ad nauseam that you have to fail to succeed. I agreed with this in theory, but in practice it was hard to digest. As a postgraduate, if you failed that was your grade. However, now, it’s a different story. Being scared to fail makes you blind to the best solutions.
Having worked on video production to provide a holistic overview to commercialize the Quick.tv service for the past few days, I felt proud when I finished. I was ahead of the deadline. From brainstorming, reincarnations, storyboarding, recording audio, and screen capturing, it was finally finished. Upon review with the team, our approach changed. The project failed.
Yet, something amazing happened. Failure had defined exactly what we wanted by seeing what we didn’t want. The video was greatly put together, yet failed to achieve the unanimous result we wanted: clarity for everyone viewing it. The failure of this video showed us what will work, opening a door that before had never been noticed until now.
This is startup culture: the ability to quickly adapt to changes and not be afraid to test new ideas. It allows the ability to test your theories, and truly find and build great ideas. It’s a challenge watching your project disintegrate before your eyes; this is how it’s done to get things right. The entrepreneurs were right: don’t be afraid to fail, it’s a great strategy.
Kevin Owens
Couldn’t agree more.
There’s a great book called ‘Funky Business’ (given to me by a successful multi-millionaire businesswoman) that echoes that idea that failure should be seen as the most important element of learning and a step towards success.
Having been in business for almost 5 years I wouldn’t take back a single mistake as they’ve been instrumental in making me the person and entreprenuer that I am today.
March 27th, 2009
Alexander
Kevin, exactly. It’s seriously a state of mind you can’t ignore. It’s always interesting to ask people, “Are you okay with failing?”
March 27th, 2009
nickpepito
reading: Culture of a Startup: You Have to Fail to Succeed http://bit.ly/C0rSh
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
March 27th, 2009