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6 Comments

How many times you have failed with your ideas?

Hello Hackers. I see you all try to make your projects happen. Is it your first idea or you have some failures? I wonder how many tries have you made so far.
Thank you

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    I've had at least 9 different co-founders join and then sputter out, including after having a product released. I listened to pitch feedback way too much and pivoted 3 times, only to go back to the beginning 3 years later. I failed to move to China twice, including walking away from $500MM USD in funding. I burnt my life savings trying to keep the company afloat when I had a team of 5, was evicted from my apartment, and secretly slept under my desk in my office for 6 months, (while I turned 40 years old). I had my car repossessed the same week as my first product was launched...

    I've been all-in for 4 years and had so many failures. So don't fret at all if your first thing doesn't work out exactly as planned.

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      Walking away from ... did I read that right?

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        Yes, the deal was Chinese government grants being given to an incubator that would co-develop my product. But none of the money could be used toward paying me a ramen salary or my rent in Shanghai. I didn't have enough savings left to float my own expenses there, so I guess the more accurate thing to say is that I couldn't take the deal.

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    Depends how you define failure. Started a company years ago, self funded it, and ended up burning pretty much all of my savings keeping people paid and eventually had to close up shop. That was likely my greatest failure and the lesson was "be more careful who you surround yourself with, every employee is an emissary for your company and while starting up, all it takes is one bad employee"

    I've had numerous other failures where failure wasn't an option and required pivots and crunch time to make up for a flawed approach and ended up turning a failure into a success (albeit a sleep deprived success).

    Honestly, people need to celebrate their failures more and learn from them (STOP being scared of failure. If you haven't failed, your idea isn't bold enough) If it were not for my failures many of my successes would have been impossible to achieve or would have been approaches I'd otherwise have not considered.

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      @Aquamoogle If you've never failed, you've never made a mistake; if you've never made a mistake, you've never made a decision.

      Agreed 100%.

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    A lot. Back when a ran a very small musical equipment manufacturing company, I had 12 failed prototypes before I got it right. That translates into 300+ hours of time (two months worth of work) right down the tubes...or was it? You see, the 13th never would've happened without the previous 12. It's all about perspective and really learning from your mistakes.

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