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>Most people cannot afford to recover from failing once. That’s not true in my experience. I’m a similar case, have started 8 businesses in 30 years. Most have
by shon 4y ago
>Most people cannot afford to recover from failing once.
That’s not true in my experience. I’m a similar case, have started 8 businesses in 30 years. Most have had some level of success: enough pay my employees and provide good healthcare while also making a (often small) profit. I’ve also had 2 exits, one of which generatied a life-changing amount of money for my co-founder and myself. Of the 6 business that did not exit, 2 failed to start, 2 achieved multi-million dollar revenue levels then failed, 2 somewhere in the middle.
In between startups I worked for other companies. I tried to optimize $/hr while I did, rebuilding my reserves and even my credit (lost everything once)
Working for others after a failed startup has many benefits. You look at company leadership differently. You observe. You learn. You make more connections. You see more market opportunities. You get inspired. You try again.
Probably key in being able to do this cycle well is to not let the businesses get over leveraged. I’ve had both funded and non-funded businesses. I’ve gone nearly broke a couple of times but a big part of learning to be an entrepreneur is learning to manage money.
- anonymousab 4y agoI'd assume "most people" refers to the average (assuming American) person that likely has tens of thousands of dollars of debt and works a job (or three) that can sustain them only by not fully servicing that debt. Putting time and money into a business venture means putting all they have on the line; failure means "skin of the teeth" living for some decades, if they can survive some winters outside.
- whartung 4y agoJust a comment on this. Congratulations on exiting with "life-changing money". But I think germane to this comment would be the order in which these companies were tried and succeeded or failed would be relevant. I assume your first venture was not the "life-changing money" venture, and the impact of when that did happen certainly can change the narrative of the rest of the businesses in regards to risk taking, particularly if it was not the last venture that was greatly successful.
- scarface74 4y agoIt’s called survivorship bias