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I think you're being overly cynical, and thereby missing the point, which is that we conflate all 'kinds' of failures together. When you decide to spend your ti

I think you're being overly cynical, and thereby missing the point, which is that we conflate all 'kinds' of failures together. When you decide to spend your time and money on something like a company you learn very quickly to disambiguate "I failed to do X, but I learned Y, and I can keep going" from "I have failed to do the things I set out to do, fundamentally, and I am defeated". And you might imagine the latter is "Your company failed" but it probably isn't. My goal isn't to start a company, it's to do good work and gain experience in this world, work with new people, etc, and if the company goes under that is a very different kind of failure. Really, the only failure scenario, for me personally, would be to give up.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago
> My goal isn't to start a company, it's to do good work and gain experience in this world, work with new people, etc, and if the company goes under that is a very different kind of failure. Really, the only failure scenario, for me personally, would be to give up. I never said anything about letting a failure define you - in fact I said the opposite and that you should learn from your mistakes. You seem to think the only person that matters when your company fails is you. Your investors certainly won't be happy about it. I also don't think many of your employees who just lost their jobs will want to celebrate your learning experience with you. Your company's failure doesn't just impact you, which is why "what a remarkable journey!" blog posts can come across as tone deaf. I think you're viewing this from the eyes of an employee, and not a founder. There are very different rules for founders and employees.
- staticassertion 7y ago
  You've completely missed my point. I will reiterate: * Conflating all types of failures is problematic and something you must learn to avoid if you start a company * Failure is more about larger goals than the steps to get there So, I have no investors or employees, and my goals are my own right now. Eventually that may change, and I will have to change my goals to account for that. I'm not sure why I'd be viewing this from the eyes of an employee as I am a founder.
  - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
    You're really using a gotcha by claiming to be a startup founder, but also have no employees or investors. Yes, in your current situation your viewpoint makes sense. Once you have investors and employees that worldview is no longer tenable unless you're a sociopath. Right now you're only responsible for yourself - once that changes so will your goals (as you pointed out yourself). I don't think we're disagreeing so much as speaking from very different perspectives.
    - staticassertion 7y ago
      I'm not trying to use a 'gotcha'. This isn't an argument from authority, I'm trying to use my experience as a vehicle for understanding one facet of this topic. My fundamental point is simply that failure is a matter of goals. For startup founders failure is something you are likely going to think about constantly as you ramp up to deciding to quit your job and put your idea out there, and that's a waste of time, and it's due to conflating different failures. Once you move past that point, and start taking on more responsibilities, your goals have to shift if you're any kind of ethical person. While early employees may be willing to take on a lot of risk, and are fundamentally responsible for the choice to come on, it would be, as you said sociopathic, not to feel any kind of responsibility. I think, given this statement, we likely agree? But then you criticized the article for being too "Feel good", which I think is a mistake. Yes it is "feel good", but maybe it's hard to understand why you need to frame things that way when you're putting yourself out there like this.
      - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
        > I think, given this statement, we likely agree? But then you criticized the article for being too "Feel good", which I think is a mistake. Yes it is "feel good", but maybe it's hard to understand why you need to frame things that way when you're putting yourself out there like this. Honestly my comment is largely a response to seeing "feel good" blog posts as a whole, and quite frankly I was overly harsh relative to the author's post. In that sense, you could say my criticism is too mean and unjustified, but I think my point still stands and it seems very popular (although it's hard to say how many people upvoted a cynical comment without reading the article first). If the author is reading this, I apologize - my comment is about the genre of your blog posts more than your blog post itself. Luckily now it does not appear to be the top comment.

OnlineGladiator 7y ago

> My goal isn't to start a company, it's to do good work and gain experience in this world, work with new people, etc, and if the company goes under that is a very different kind of failure. Really, the only failure scenario, for me personally, would be to give up. I never said anything about letting a failure define you - in fact I said the opposite and that you should learn from your mistakes. You seem to think the only person that matters when your company fails is you. Your investors certainly won't be happy about it. I also don't think many of your employees who just lost their jobs will want to celebrate your learning experience with you. Your company's failure doesn't just impact you, which is why "what a remarkable journey!" blog posts can come across as tone deaf. I think you're viewing this from the eyes of an employee, and not a founder. There are very different rules for founders and employees.

staticassertion 7y ago
You've completely missed my point. I will reiterate: * Conflating all types of failures is problematic and something you must learn to avoid if you start a company * Failure is more about larger goals than the steps to get there So, I have no investors or employees, and my goals are my own right now. Eventually that may change, and I will have to change my goals to account for that. I'm not sure why I'd be viewing this from the eyes of an employee as I am a founder.
- OnlineGladiator 7y ago
  You're really using a gotcha by claiming to be a startup founder, but also have no employees or investors. Yes, in your current situation your viewpoint makes sense. Once you have investors and employees that worldview is no longer tenable unless you're a sociopath. Right now you're only responsible for yourself - once that changes so will your goals (as you pointed out yourself). I don't think we're disagreeing so much as speaking from very different perspectives.
  - staticassertion 7y ago
    I'm not trying to use a 'gotcha'. This isn't an argument from authority, I'm trying to use my experience as a vehicle for understanding one facet of this topic. My fundamental point is simply that failure is a matter of goals. For startup founders failure is something you are likely going to think about constantly as you ramp up to deciding to quit your job and put your idea out there, and that's a waste of time, and it's due to conflating different failures. Once you move past that point, and start taking on more responsibilities, your goals have to shift if you're any kind of ethical person. While early employees may be willing to take on a lot of risk, and are fundamentally responsible for the choice to come on, it would be, as you said sociopathic, not to feel any kind of responsibility. I think, given this statement, we likely agree? But then you criticized the article for being too "Feel good", which I think is a mistake. Yes it is "feel good", but maybe it's hard to understand why you need to frame things that way when you're putting yourself out there like this.
    - OnlineGladiator 7y ago
      > I think, given this statement, we likely agree? But then you criticized the article for being too "Feel good", which I think is a mistake. Yes it is "feel good", but maybe it's hard to understand why you need to frame things that way when you're putting yourself out there like this. Honestly my comment is largely a response to seeing "feel good" blog posts as a whole, and quite frankly I was overly harsh relative to the author's post. In that sense, you could say my criticism is too mean and unjustified, but I think my point still stands and it seems very popular (although it's hard to say how many people upvoted a cynical comment without reading the article first). If the author is reading this, I apologize - my comment is about the genre of your blog posts more than your blog post itself. Luckily now it does not appear to be the top comment.