Entrepreneurship Failure

Posted on April 26, 2007

I’ve decided to write about Entrepreneurship failure mostly because it’s so hard to find relevant resources on it. I can’t really talk about that from my experience, so this post is full of relevant outside links (I have added this after previewing the post - lots of blue on it from the external linking :)

While reading “Founders at work” I thought: we have tons of books about successful start-ups, then who would invest time and money writing about failure? First, I don’t think you are truly aware that it’s going to be an entrepreneurship failure until it’s already a failure and second, even if you think it’s going to become a failure - that no reason to brag about it (or put it this way, you would want to fail anonymously). I’m not the only one saying we have so little on failure, Brad Feld says in his blog “I’ve noticed a pattern in many of the VC and entrepreneur blogs I read – very few people ever talk about failure”

And still, Entrepreneurs are really afraid of failures. Statistics say that most companies will close doors in the first 5 years - that would be a major reason to worry as most of Entrepreneurs are building or thinking on the long term. But hey, actually most businesses are designed to have a limited life, so statistics could be wrong as Entrepreneur.com tries to determine in their Debunking the myth that most startups crash and burn article.

I actually become aware of failure when InterAKT got sold to Adobe, and my former boss wrote about his entrepreneurship experience. It’s hard to believe that a person that “made it” says: “In the meanwhile (before creating InterAKT), I’ve joined my first startup as a CEO: Contextus. You’ve probably haven’t heard of it because it died pretty soon. We were very, very young, and selling websites to Romanians, in 1996, wasn’t such a great business. By December 97, I left with a sore taste in my mouth.”. So even these fine Super Entrepreneurs fail?

Actually the Internet is a big open book on “failure as a necessary evil for any Entrepreneur”. Businessweek says “Failure Is Part of Success” and I also have a nice resource on “Failure Quotes“. By far the most educative article I’ve read on business failure is the Centaur Zone Cafe story.

What’s interesting about humans is their power to avoid thinking all the time about negative things. Like we all know that we are going to dye, but how often are we thinking about this each day? Moreover, Successful entrepreneurs have a positive mindset around the experience of failure.

OK, this article should make me all savvy about Entrepreneurship failure, right? Well, just like everybody else, I’m doing my share of mistakes: bad business plan, expanding too late, lack of focusing. But these are not necessarily entrepreneurship mistakes - they are business mistakes (so let’s say entrepreneurship mistakes are about not fulfilling the company goals, the shareholder expectations and so on). By the way, are you running your business into the ground?

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