I'm an incredible failure. Or at least, I try to be.
Over the past 30+ years of building startups, my greatest superpower has been my willingness and ability to embrace failure. If we don't understand how important failure is in the startup game, we have almost no chance of ever succeeding.
That's because we're in the game of failure. Not all out failure, like we're going out of our way to tank our startups (although that's kind of the default condition, sadly).
We're in the business of taking massive chances on unproven markets and products. There's zero chance that we're just going to get it right miraculously without running into a massive number of failures along the way.
But that's fine — so long as we get freakishly good at how to fail, fix, and repeat.
### The Problem with Avoiding Failure
Look, no one loves failure.
It's not like I get out of bed in the morning and say "Boy, I hope every bet I just made on my company goes horribly." I'm not some kind of startup masochist, although on most days that's pretty much how any of us feels.
But we spend way too much time trying to avoid failure, when realistically, there are just some things we simply don't know.
We have no idea if our new co-founder situation is going to work out. We have no idea if this landing page is going to convert. We have no idea if the agency we just hired is going to perform. We have to fail to find out, and when we avoid failing at all, we don't learn a damn thing.
### Failure Breeds Success
But when we embrace failure and are willing to break things, we learn a lot really fast. I spent the early part of my career terrified that I'd make a single mistake as a Founder.
I avoided every possible decision that "might" turn out badly. While doing that, I also avoided every possible thread that I could have learned from, which is exactly where success comes from.
Every great company is a series of blundering failures that were course-corrected into success. When we talked to aspiring Founders, they always fear making bad decisions, and our advice is the same thing: "Get used to it. In fact, get good at it. If you don't, you'll never learn anything, and you've already lost."
### Failure as a Master Skill
I'm way on the other end of that spectrum now. I am really, really good at failing. Not because I'm an idiot (maybe that too), but because I've learned how to recover over and over again.
You know who isn't good at it? My competition, whoever that is. Somewhere there's a competing Founder who is worried about releasing a product, pushing a marketing initiative, or hiring someone. I love it. While they are avoiding failure, I'm ripping right through it, getting to the right answer much faster.
Mastering failure is about as close to a Potion of Invulnerability (where my D&D nerds at?) as you can possibly find. When failure can't stop you because you recover from everything, nothing can stop you.
Who wouldn't want to be great at that?
### Fail Small, Win Big
The key here is limiting our failures in scope, ideally. There's a huge difference between screwing up a landing page and tanking the whole company, obviously.
But those little fails, at a rapid pace, can all be recovered. Over time, as we build that muscle memory of recovery, we'll take on bigger and bigger swings, like stacking more plates on the weight bench.
It starts with understanding the power of failure and recovery, and then having the courage to embrace it. If you want to be a Master of the Universe in this game, you're going to need some superpowers.
Time to level up.
In Case You Missed It
We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success Every moment we spend pursuing an undefined goal is a complete waste of time — especially personal goals.
Why No One Tells Founders "It's over, move on." No one ever actually tells Founders it’s okay to quit. No one except other Founders, of course.
Retiring Early is a Broken Concept Retiring isn't really our end goal, so we shouldn't aspire to it. What we really want is to shape our life the way we want it to be.