Failure is not an option. It’s a requirement.
March 18, 2009 by Christian Faulconer
Filed under Featured, Strategy
I just found this video on WorkHappy.net and I really liked it:
I like the way everyone in the video talks about failure. I think that every crappy company must fail in order to succeed. The fact is that if you are in a startup, there is about a 99.999% chance that what you are doing now isn’t what you will be doing in a year. In fact, for your sake, I hope it isn’t. That’s not to say that I think your entire business will fail, but some aspect of it will fail and you will, you should emerge from that knowing a lot more about how to become a good company than you knew before you failed.
Fail fast but not often. Understand that you will have to reinvent yourselves a couple of times before you get it right. If you have this mindset, you’ll be a lot more careful about spending your money. Trust me that you are going to fail and make that happen as fast as possible and with as little cash out the door as possible so that you can get on to making your crappy company a good one.
Love the point about fail fast. There are so many stories out there about great companies (now) that are doing something totally different from what they started out to do. See the opportunities, be honest about what isn’t working, and don’t be afraid to call a halt to something that’s burning money so you can build something else that will be a winner for your company!