Brad Feld on failure

While I fail at stuff regularly, I’ll never forget the deepest cycle of failure I’ve been in to date. As the Internet bubble popped exploded, company after company that I was an investor in failed. As I grappled with this, I felt like I had been run over by a truck. After I got up, a steamroller came and flattened me. As I was peeling myself off the ground, the steamroller backed up and smushed me again. Then, I realized I was lying on top of a hole and the top fell in and I tumbled down to the bottom. As I was looking up at the sky, some jerk came into view, poured gasoline onto me, and then dropped a flaming stick on top of me. By the summer of 2001, I realized that ever day had been worse than the previous day. I no longer got up in the morning and said “ok – today will be better than yesterday”; instead I resolved myself that every day would be worse, until it eventually got better. Then 9/11 happened.

I hung in there, kept getting up every day and doing my best, working hard to make informed and intelligent decisions, and helping all of the companies I was an investor in however I could. A few more failed, but a nice number survived and ultimately thrived. Things eventually got better. And I learned a lot.

In my world view, the best leaders understand that failure is an integral part of things. The cliche “fail fast” is one of my favorites. When things aren’t working, deal with it. Another is the famous line from Atlas Shrugged “Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatever.” Denying that failure is part of our existence is akin to faking reality.

While I accept “the experience of failure” feels “negative / crappy / depressing / hard / sucky”, I don’t believe that “failure is bad”