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I will buy that it can cause problems with personal relationships, though working 12-hour days as a startup employee will do that too. But the idea that failure
by gamble 16y ago
I will buy that it can cause problems with personal relationships, though working 12-hour days as a startup employee will do that too. But the idea that failure hurts you as an entrepreneur is just factually incorrect. Unless personal incompetence was obviously the reason for failure, failed founders have a much easier time raising money and hiring for a new startup.
- wdewind 16y agoI think it depends on how you fail. I'm not talking about a 25 year old's Y-Combinator idea not working out. I'm also not talking about a hyper-technical, experimental startup. Those have high expectations and tolerance for failure. I'm talking about something more entrenched in our mainstream culture, years in, people employed and health insured, etc. Most people who "succeed" have likely "failed" before (that's where they got the experience), but there are definitely levels at which failure hurts you, in many different ways. To say it is "factually incorrect" is over-simplifying the reality. We don't have a culture that embraces failure nearly as much as we should, though the tech world certainly embraces what it would call the "right kind of failure."
- gamble 16y agoThis is why I restricted my original statement to YC-style startups. A capital intensive startup that someone invests their life savings into at age 45 is entirely different than a software startup founded on a shoestring budget by new college grads. I don't think the latter is particularly risky, which is why there are so many more of them than even 10-15 years ago.