Progress That Comes With Failures

IT IS A WELL-KNOWN MAXIM that 90 per cent of all startups fail. Failure is important because it is at the heart of entrepreneurial success. Thomas Edison, who failed a thousand times at inventing the light bulb before succeeding, said “I didn’t fail a thousand times. The light bulb was an invention with a thousand steps.”

- Mohit Charnalia

The path to startup success, too, is paved with many mis-steps. However, more gets written about success than failure because it is more glamorous and comforting to read about. There is also a survivorship bias where shining successes are more visible than the anonymous struggles of failed businesses. Analysis of startups is often focused on the end result, whether they failed or succeeded, and not on the process, which is always a combination of failing and succeeding. This focus results in definitive laundry lists of things to do or not to do for achieving success and avoiding failure. Yet, handling failure is important to achieving success. Laundry lists can provide useful but incomplete advice to entrepreneurs that they must, among other things, focus on their niche, be passionate, deliver great quality and believe in themselves. However, it is this self-belief that gets severely tested as entrepreneurs struggle through a journey that starts with them achieving perfection in presentation, moves rapidly to them seeing their business soaring on spreadsheets, and often ends up with them crashing into cash flow statements that bleed red.