Embrace failure

Genius and madness are two different sides of the same coin. To never make a mistake is to never learn anything new. You must fail in order to succeed, and you must do so often. For every great idea that I have executed there are a hundred or more that never went anywhere. Many of my longest running dreams are often put on ice until a customer has a similar need, or the time is right to bring it to market. Not only do you need to fail often, but fail as economically as possible to ensure that you don’t bet the farm on the wrong idea. More often than not I meet people willing to risk it all on an idea with no concept of whether it will succeed, but merely has a hunch that customers will buy it. This is a dangerous and costly way to think.

One example of organic success I like to use is Kevin Rose’s creation of Digg. Kevin predicted that if he could develop a way for friends to link to news stories and vote up the ones that were the best, it would help filter out the really interesting stuff and discard the junk. So, he found a programmer that would do the basic work for a few thousand dollars; he developed just enough to make a working prototype for him and his friends – no fancy logo or interface, just the basics. Jason Calacanis, owner of Weblogs Inc. at that time, noticed that when an article made it onto Digg, it would instantly be viewed by thousands of visitors. Calacanis quickly invited Kevin to lunch and made him an offer to invest in his new company. Kevin ended up securing financing elsewhere to maintain a growing technology infrastructure he could no longer afford to support. The money he required was for servers and bandwidth for his new idea, not for cushy offices and stock incentive programs. I like Kevin’s story because it is a perfect example of building a product organically and using investment capital for hard costs, not merely to find profitability or an audience.

I do believe that if you build something right, they will come. But building something great doesn’t guarantee any level of success. Like Seth Godin says, “Ideas that spread, win.” Digg is about spreading ideas far and wide, and helping to systematically filter the web for the most interesting content. It has mutual benefits for both the publisher and reader to participate. Without an organic way to deliver genuine interest, it can be very costly to try to create something that reaches the masses.

The moral of the story is to incubate many different ideas in order to find the one or two that the public will embrace. This requires repeated failure until you nail down something that people actually want. If you fear failing, you’ll never progress. If you wait for the perfect time, it will never come. If you need the perfect idea, it will not materialize. If you need tons of cash and lots of people, then God be with you. It is always easier to succeed when someone gives you the capital to fulfill your desires, but when you need to start making money you’ll have no experience doing so.

With every failure, good or bad, comes experience. Some of my perceived successes, such as selling my footwear brand MEDIUM, I consider to be a failure. Although the company made money and was acquired, I consider it a failure because is no longer exists. Companies that succeed have brands that exist. This goes for many ideas I worked on, and companies that I owned. The jury is still out on New Leaders. It is one of the most popular companies I have ever owned, but more importantly it is a platform on which we can incubate many of our desires. Whether our own ideas such as Electric Checkbook or Signalfire, or our customers’ hopes and dreams like Bookshelf.org, we are creating interest, making money, and learning new things everyday. While many things that New Leaders puts out there will never go anywhere, as long as we continue trying we’ll sooner or later create tremendous value at a very low cost. Achieving that will require embracing failure.

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This work is licensed through Creative Commons.

Posted on Nov 02, 2008 by Kevin Milden

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