Reading an Inc Magazine profile of TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, one of the quotes that leapt out of the story was Arrington’s view on entrepreneurs and failure;
Our main competitive advantage is that my team and I truly love entrepreneurs. They’re my rock stars. I’ve always been fascinated by entrepreneurs. I had four businesses that did not work out. TechCrunch is my first real success, and it happened by accident. If I were to write a book, it would be about what drives entrepreneurs. I meet the winners, and the losers, too. Most of them could go out and get a perfectly reasonable job as an accountant or a lawyer. Instead, they risk everything for almost certain failure. The losers are actually more interesting sometimes. You learn a ton from failure.
“You learn a ton from failure”
We have a habit of celebrating the winners and ignoring the ventures that didn’t work out, if we don’t outright scorn them.
The thing is we learn from the failures — the misjudgements, bad luck and downright stupid ideas that we all have when running a business teach us about ourselves, our partners and the world around us.
We need to be valuing those lessons as they prepare us for when we do have a success.
The world is becoming increasingly risk adverse and the paradox there is that by avoiding failure, we ultimately reduce our chances of success.