Today we have a new guest post by Martin Zwilling - a veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech professional, and angel investor.
If your first startup fails, you are about average. Most entrepreneurs fail on at least one attempt. Investors agree that an entrepreneur who has never failed probably hasn’t pushed the limits. What investors look for is not that you never fail, but that you learn from the failure, maintain a positive attitude, and work with integrity on the next one.
According to Harvey Mackay in his book “Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door,” how to rebound from failure or rejection is an essential skill to acquire for success. His bullets are about job hunting, but I believe the principles apply equally well to starting a business:
1. Analyze every failure, but never wallow in one. Failure is a condition that all of us experience. It’s our reaction to our failures that distinguishes winners from losers. A great entrepreneur is like a great racehorse. There’s no quit in them. Defeats are temporary. Heart and class are permanent.
2. Don’t rationalize away the hurt. Don’t kid yourself and try to cover up the hurt with “My idea is just ahead of it’s time.” Don’t let your worth be defined by others. Point your head in the right direction and get back in the game. Do rethink the path, but don’t abandon the goal.
3. Don’t walk around as if you’re wearing a scarlet letter. Whatever you do, don’t take a startup failure personally. It may indeed have nothing to do with you. We have just been through a recession, and big customers do change their mind. Self-pity has no positive applications.
4. Start worrying when they stop considering you as a contender. Thomas Edison tried over ten thousand different experiments before he finally demonstrated the first incandescent light bulb. Henry Ford’s first two companies failed, and Bill Gates' first company, Traf-O-Data, was a failure. Failure is staying down, not falling down.
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