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The human angle behind these stories transcends way beyond the business one. Its uncanny how these two founders articulated about the pain in almost the same wa

by achow 11y ago

The human angle behind these stories transcends way beyond the business one. Its uncanny how these two founders articulated about the pain in almost the same way as each other: 99Dresses - Nikki Durkin: Many startup folk say that failure should be celebrated. “Fail fast, fail early, fail often!” they all chant, trying to put a positive spin on the most excruciating pain any founder could experience..Let me tell you — failure fucking sucks..I travelled to my parent’s place in the countryside of Australia, locked myself away in my room and cried for what seemed like an entire week. Critica - Jason Huertas: You’ll hear the phrase “Fail fast” or “It’s good to fail”. Which is true. You can’t learn without failing. But what they don’t tell you is just how utterly devastating failure actually is for an entrepreneur. To sacrifice your personal relationships, finances, and health to the dream, and to still come up short. How could this happen to me? It was a very frustrating and dark place to be in. The case of 99Dresses was an eye opener. I would beg to differ with the general sentiment in the comment section here about how co-founders lacked sense of product market fit etc. Nikki Durkin had oodles of determination, immense grit, was a YCombinator alumni, had great product-market fit, managed decent seed funding, had good traction which many startup can only aspire to in the initial days, a team who were behind her most of the time, still.. All things being equal (actually the case showed even if they are not) fate, right-time-right-place is a factor which nobody can control, and which has decisive play in the scheme of things. I can only wish good luck to Nikki Durkin, and I’m 100% sure that she would come out with something amazing in future.

alaskamiller 11y ago
Two things: 1) Learn to live with failure. Most of these folks sound pretty privileged, as if they never got smacked in the face with reality or had to deal with failure. Sometimes that's what happens when one is a young superstar, the odds were in their favor until it wasn't. The rest of us just learned to deal with disappointment and overcoming. 2) The real secret about success is that it's random. It's not even about luck or hard work, success is simply random. Luck is just a lottery scratcher and hard work lets you get more tickets to scratch but hard work, product fit, traction blah blah don't guarantee success. Because again, success is random. Thinking otherwise will drive you crazy trying to analyze why bad things happen to good people and good things happens to bad people. Determination is the only trait that finds success, because you just keep trying until you die. Which then calls back to my first point: learn to live with failure. It's good for you. Each subsequent time you need to cry less.
- kenjackson 11y ago
  Learn to live with failure. Most of these folks sound pretty privileged, as if they never got smacked in the face with reality or had to deal with failure. Sometimes that's what happens when one is a young superstar, the odds were in their favor until it wasn't. I disagree. Never learn to live with failure. Failure should be painful, and should be proportional to what you put into trying to succeed. Doing a startup should be toward the top of the list of things you should feel really bad about failing at (after failing as a parent, spouse, child). You should pour everything you have into the startup. If you do anything less then you probably deserve to fail (although you may still succeed). If you can do a startup, fail, and then say, "no biggie, on to the next", then you're probably not someone that I would bet on. That said, after a week of crying (and probably months prior to that of anxiety), you should be able to bounce back. Incorporate all that you learned into your next try.
  - alaskamiller 11y ago
    Using pain as a motivation is what a monk does behind closed doors whipping himself to get to god. I offer satisfaction as the better non-masochistic alternative. And in your scenario only a child plays that game. Because they don't know any better and at that stage it's entirely based only randomness. Today's Disney super star is tomorrow's old news. There's also some kind of weird perversion of only wanting to place bets on those so intense that they tilt to suicide from the anxiety and shame. Adults know better and as it turns out after adulting for awhile and living in reality only then does entrepreneurship really take shape.
    - kenjackson 11y ago
      It's not based on randomness. You can't field a random group of 12 men and win the NBA Championship or 53 for the Super Bowl. As composed as Russell Wilson was, he didn't immediately forget about the game. That's the difference between those that make it and those that don't. I'd be curious if there are virtually any successful founders (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Jerry Yang, etc) who would have been completely indifferent if they failed. I suspect that is not highly correlated with those that succeed. And I think Floyd Mayweather would offer that failure is bad for you. You can learn as many lessons from winning/succeeding as losing/failing. Or as an ex-coach used to say, "losing teaches a lot of lessons -- most importantly, that you need to figure out how to win"
bliti 11y ago
I reason that the hard part was failing in spite of all those great things that she had managed to accomplish. That is super tough. She overcame many obstacles that, in her understanding, would bring her closer to the goal. In the end, the core of the business was not sound. Is it her fault? I don't think so. Its nobody's fault. A business is more of an experiment than anything. She may have felt that way because it was a very public failure and she was the face of the business. Which is a mistake in my opinion. Don't become the face of your business. Let the product take center stage. You should be the person behind the curtains making things happen, but never in the spotlight. If the product fails, all you have to do is find another product. No shame to deal with. I learned this from my first business failure. I was being the center of attention and loving it. But when it failed, I was crushed. Took me a while to understand that a business is merely a system that works around selling a product. Its not me. This has allowed me to build and sell products that fail without feeling shame or pain. Its just a product. It failed. Let's move on to the next.
- gregpilling 11y ago
  I understand your position, I have been the face and failed. Failure sucks. Also when your name is on the business, you can't say "I have to check with the boss" as every customers knows that you are that boss. I think though that Virgin group of companies would be less successful and well known if Richard Branson was not such a face for all the companies. Steve Jobs persona was a factor in Apple, as is Elon Musk's persona is helpful to Tesla and SpaceX. At best it is a double edge sword, good and bad all in one. I am sure Nikki Durkin will rise again.
  - bliti 11y ago
    Well put. It's not black or white, but a sea of grey. I will be emailing you to talk about automation. We share the same interest. :)
justonepost 11y ago
"Fail young" would be better way to phrase it. You can learn a lot and bounce back if you fail in your 20s.

by achow 11y ago

alaskamiller 11y ago

Two things: 1) Learn to live with failure. Most of these folks sound pretty privileged, as if they never got smacked in the face with reality or had to deal with failure. Sometimes that's what happens when one is a young superstar, the odds were in their favor until it wasn't. The rest of us just learned to deal with disappointment and overcoming. 2) The real secret about success is that it's random. It's not even about luck or hard work, success is simply random. Luck is just a lottery scratcher and hard work lets you get more tickets to scratch but hard work, product fit, traction blah blah don't guarantee success. Because again, success is random. Thinking otherwise will drive you crazy trying to analyze why bad things happen to good people and good things happens to bad people. Determination is the only trait that finds success, because you just keep trying until you die. Which then calls back to my first point: learn to live with failure. It's good for you. Each subsequent time you need to cry less.

kenjackson 11y ago
Learn to live with failure. Most of these folks sound pretty privileged, as if they never got smacked in the face with reality or had to deal with failure. Sometimes that's what happens when one is a young superstar, the odds were in their favor until it wasn't. I disagree. Never learn to live with failure. Failure should be painful, and should be proportional to what you put into trying to succeed. Doing a startup should be toward the top of the list of things you should feel really bad about failing at (after failing as a parent, spouse, child). You should pour everything you have into the startup. If you do anything less then you probably deserve to fail (although you may still succeed). If you can do a startup, fail, and then say, "no biggie, on to the next", then you're probably not someone that I would bet on. That said, after a week of crying (and probably months prior to that of anxiety), you should be able to bounce back. Incorporate all that you learned into your next try.
- alaskamiller 11y ago
  Using pain as a motivation is what a monk does behind closed doors whipping himself to get to god. I offer satisfaction as the better non-masochistic alternative. And in your scenario only a child plays that game. Because they don't know any better and at that stage it's entirely based only randomness. Today's Disney super star is tomorrow's old news. There's also some kind of weird perversion of only wanting to place bets on those so intense that they tilt to suicide from the anxiety and shame. Adults know better and as it turns out after adulting for awhile and living in reality only then does entrepreneurship really take shape.
  - kenjackson 11y ago
    It's not based on randomness. You can't field a random group of 12 men and win the NBA Championship or 53 for the Super Bowl. As composed as Russell Wilson was, he didn't immediately forget about the game. That's the difference between those that make it and those that don't. I'd be curious if there are virtually any successful founders (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Jerry Yang, etc) who would have been completely indifferent if they failed. I suspect that is not highly correlated with those that succeed. And I think Floyd Mayweather would offer that failure is bad for you. You can learn as many lessons from winning/succeeding as losing/failing. Or as an ex-coach used to say, "losing teaches a lot of lessons -- most importantly, that you need to figure out how to win"

bliti 11y ago

I reason that the hard part was failing in spite of all those great things that she had managed to accomplish. That is super tough. She overcame many obstacles that, in her understanding, would bring her closer to the goal. In the end, the core of the business was not sound. Is it her fault? I don't think so. Its nobody's fault. A business is more of an experiment than anything. She may have felt that way because it was a very public failure and she was the face of the business. Which is a mistake in my opinion. Don't become the face of your business. Let the product take center stage. You should be the person behind the curtains making things happen, but never in the spotlight. If the product fails, all you have to do is find another product. No shame to deal with. I learned this from my first business failure. I was being the center of attention and loving it. But when it failed, I was crushed. Took me a while to understand that a business is merely a system that works around selling a product. Its not me. This has allowed me to build and sell products that fail without feeling shame or pain. Its just a product. It failed. Let's move on to the next.

gregpilling 11y ago
I understand your position, I have been the face and failed. Failure sucks. Also when your name is on the business, you can't say "I have to check with the boss" as every customers knows that you are that boss. I think though that Virgin group of companies would be less successful and well known if Richard Branson was not such a face for all the companies. Steve Jobs persona was a factor in Apple, as is Elon Musk's persona is helpful to Tesla and SpaceX. At best it is a double edge sword, good and bad all in one. I am sure Nikki Durkin will rise again.
- bliti 11y ago
  Well put. It's not black or white, but a sea of grey. I will be emailing you to talk about automation. We share the same interest. :)

justonepost 11y ago

"Fail young" would be better way to phrase it. You can learn a lot and bounce back if you fail in your 20s.