Not Celebrating Failure
Whomever coined that phrase "Celebrate Failure" had way too much VC money to burn. Failure sucks and it’s painful. Often times the bigger the innovation, the harder the fall.
That moment when you get the 7:30pm slack message that “we have a problem” because the new product architecture that the team invested months developing suddenly implodes less than a week into production and you have less than 12 hours to get it fixed, only to realize the fix is a temporary workaround and the whole thing has to go back to the white board.
And the following days where you overly scrutinize yourself and question your decision’s because you listened to the outside “experts” and failed to listen to your own advice and intuition - which now cost the company months of engineering time and expense… and the calculator spinning in your head at 3am adding-up dollars and the opportunity cost of the ordeal.
Yep, that was my week.
But in startup parlance, we should celebrate failure, right?
Hell no. Whomever coined that phrase had way too much VC money to burn. Failure sucks and it’s painful. Often times the bigger the innovation, the harder the fall.
But you know what failure really is?
It’s dues paid.
It’s scar tissue.
It’s tuition.
It’s the reveal of an imperfect design.
It’s the universe sending a stark reminder that us humans are indeed fallible, no matter how good you think you are.
Sometimes, it’s staring into the abyss wondering where bottom is.
It’s also an opportunity to learn, grow and create something better. Or as Napoleon Hill said, “Every adversity, every failure, every heartbreak, carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."
When failure strikes, do the retrospective and capture all of the key learnings. Be introspective and lay the facts bare. Because only then can you implement a plan to prevent the same mistakes twice.
Failure is also an opportunity to celebrate a team that pulls the all nighter to ensure not a single customer is impacted- and then spends the rest of the week smoking-out the ghost in the machine. Distress has a way of revealing who people truly are, and I’m grateful for our amazing team.
Ultimately, the entrepreneur knows that failure is a sunk cost and there’s no use pouting about it or throwing good money after bad to salvage it. Forward is the only direction.
The inventor knows that failure is just part of the territory and starts the masterpiece over again with a blank canvas.
The Alchemist teaches us that purity is only achieved through burning-off the dross.
And while we may have been set back this week, one thing is 100% certain- when this baby does public launch, it’s going to be bold, beautiful and like nothing the industry has ever seen- and it will be worth the journey.