Stop telling people to fail fast

Stop telling people what to do and what not to do.

When businesses fail fast, you get
Wasted time
Wasted money
Lessons learned

When people fail fast, you get

Mountains of debt
Ruined careers
Significant mental health problems

I'm not sure I follow. The idea of failing fast isn't to "fail big as soon as possible". It's more of a scientific method to learning the truth about your business idea. If you take forever to validate an idea, you're more likely to build up mountains of debt, waste time, and ruin your career. If, on the other hand, you test out a small idea and it fails, you can bail quickly.

Another way to look at it is that learning is all about failing. If you are trying to do something new and are not learning, chances are you either already know how to do it, or you're not trying hard enough to push your abilities. It's only when you hit your abilities that you fail and learn something new.

Hopefully, you've set yourself up so you can recover from that failure and try again. If you don't have the ability to recover, maybe it's not worth it to take on such a large risk.

I find this discussion rather pedantic.

When people say "fail fast," they basically just mean "remember to move on if it's not working, don't get married to one idea."

I think you're reading into/dramatizing it too much.

I 1000% agree with this. Everyone should read the story about Daymond john and FUBU. Don't quit your day job right away and jump into your startup. Build it on the side and use that steady income to help you build it. Yes, it's harder to do two things at once, but trust me, it's easier to build knowing you have a secure paycheck and no rushed limit to"make it"

I don't take offense from this post at all. Ad You might as well be talking directly to me. I am a big proponent of "Fail Fast, Fail Often", even when I don't take my own advice :)

I also, quit my job almost a year ago so I could focus on building a project and finally finishing it. (if I think deeply about it there were other reasons but this was the primary excuse). I burned through savings and have subsequently had to go back to FT work with no finished project to show for it. I did not fail fast...I just failed.

I think a lot of people misunderstand the "fail fast" advice. It doesn't necessarily mean "quit your job, go balls to the wall, burn out, and fail at your dream". If it did, this would be AWFUL advice.

The way I (and I think others who give this advice) understand this advice is:

"Build the smallest thing you can that solves the simplest problem you are focusing on and get it in the hands of as many users as possible as quickly as you can so they can tell you if it's garbage or not. If it's garbage drop it and pivot to something else immediately."

No breaking that down a bit, all it is saying is build an MVP you can show some real potential users and get their feedback quickly so you know if you have something people want. If these first few users tell you they don't like it, you've failed. Move on. Don't waste more time on a doomed project.

Now maybe this timeframe is 1 weekend. Maybe it's 1 month. But it shouldn't be 1 year. If you are spending time and money on a project for too long, you are going to lose a lot of time and money. And this wasted time and money could have been spent on some other idea which could have been more likely to be successful.

While I agree with much of what you say in this post, I think you fundamentally misunderstand the point of "fail fast". No one wants your start up to fail, but you should move on from doomed projects...now if only I could follow this sage advice :)

Frankly, it’s often a silly financial decision as well as a sign of a developer’s lack of patience, to quit their day job to found their startup instead of developing their business more slowly and sustainably with a comfortable, secure job.

Hmm, 'fail fast' doesn't mean 'build fast'. It just means 'build minimal and validate' before investing significant (time/energy/money), else move on quickly.

It's a trick to avoid 'Mountains of debt', not to have them. It's also independent of whether someone pursue a side hustle or quit their day job.

Although I agree to your general sentiment that Indies shouldn't get too excited and quit their day jobs, without having a sustainable + validated business backup. A counter point someone may raise is that - if you don't put your 100%, you are significantly less likely to succeed - agree to that too.

“fail fast but don't fail often”

Great article, I think there is a lot of good insight here. We are building our own SaaS platform and agree with the idea behind "Let startups fail fast and founders succeed slowly".

I think the only way for a founder to succeed slowly is to make small experiments that validate an idea. If it didn't work, pivot. You can fail fast 1000 times if they are small experiments that will hopefully lead to a gradual understanding and growth in the long term.

Hi Mitch, thanks for your post and your honest words. I agree with you, cause I did the exact opposite of what you wrote and took my lesson. We are heavily biased by all those success stories in the media and hearing only from startups that made it. However, over 90% of startups fail. Things might not work out as expected or initially planned. This happened to me. I quit my job, jumped into my startup idea. Successfully applied to a tech incubator. Made it to the finals. I expected to get pre-seed investment quickly only to find out that most of the investors and big names in our country won't risk pre-seed investments. I thought I would find a capable team and that we will build a prototype together in a couple of months. It took as a year. I burned a significant amount of my funds. I lost my relationship. I got back to live at my parents basement. I was doubting myself and was consumed by fear and disappointment. Then I started to code websites just to have some cashflow for the startup and to make a living. Got my live straight again. Now we are slowly getting out of the valley of death. But, it took much more than I initially thought. All the best to you and your team! Regards, Alex.

Hi Mitch!

The post has a contradictory feeling. On the one hand, it's kind of a waste of time to treat one failure as a total failure, but on the other hand, it's like, "Don't go where you don't know what you're doing. I could be wrong. It seems that a starter, on the contrary, needs to be partly adventurous, a person who listens to the council of creative opinion. Being able to create a team and work through an idea. And even if it doesn't go off, don't give it up, but improve it.

It's long to build a community and have a good SEO strategy. I would say start with a side project and take your time when the traction starts Go

I see your point. I am one of those that decided to quit the job to pursue a bootstrapper career but many entrepreneurs in the WBE Space are taking it slow and building their projects on the side and some times I have to admit that I envy them for having stability. In the end I think that the grass is always greener in the other side...

Test your riskiest assumptions first...this is the takeaway and it applies to startups, businesses, founders, enterprises, etc.

The fail fast mantra, as intended by the author, has definitely been used and abused since he wrote the book. Testing your riskiest assumptions upfront lets you say, "If I'm wrong about XYZ, this won't work. How can I quickly learn if I'm wrong about this?"

I’ve been doing software side hustles over 25 years. In that time I’ve met hundreds doing the same thing and a large portion have quit their jobs to peruse it. For the ones who quit and were successful more than a couple years that number is definitely under 5%. The real life numbers on this might be a lot higher with greater number samples, but my experience is dont waste your savings. Take care of your family and work hard in your free time. Keep hustling, but don’t gamble unless you’re really young with no real responsibilities.

I like this post. Mitch expressed his opinion. I do not get why people started to argue with his view of work and life given his stage in life.
I am commenting here only because something related crossed my mind recently. I used to read startup theory pieces because I like a good theory, in general. But for me, even the most revered and famed theory is just a starter for critical thinking. Only I know my inner state: experience, skills, goals... Only I can tell if a given theory has any bearing on my unique situation.

One of the interesting trends I'm noticing in a lot of these comments is, oddly enough, an understanding of this post that seems to ignore even the title of the post itself.

Stop telling people to fail fast

I'm not telling you what to do, like @NorNorsu's odd commentary about me sounding like a teacher and whatnot. I'm asking that you let people launch their start-up how they want to, without shaming them into quitting their job or crashing and burning.

Further proof that a lot of this misunderstanding is coming from either not reading the full post or not really trying to hear it out is that I literally stated that I envy people with the courage to take that leap, and that you should do it if you want to.

If you want to quit your job to pursue your dreams, by all means go for it. That’s your own choice and frankly in a way I envy you for your courage.

I'm not knocking the decision, I'm literally stating that you should let people make the decision on their own without pressuring them into it.

Great thoughts.

I've not been on the site in a while, so I can't speak to what others are saying, but you make a good point.

It took me 2 years building Dabble in my spare time. I have 6 kids! But I did launch early.

When I launched, I did not have all the features I wanted, even those I thought would be necessary for launch, but I had a deadline which I imposed by dropping $12k to sponsor a big event (money I had saved up and if not recouped, I'd be ok, but still not money I would want wasted!).

I learned immediately that mobile support was the #1 feature request, something I could never have guessed before that. Who would want to write a novel on their phone?! Apparently, writers don't want to have to put away their books for silly things like social events or grocery store trips. Launching early helped me understand my customers better, and it gave me a greater passion and confidence in what I was doing!

2.5 years later I had a full salary. And the company just keeps growing! I'm so glad I did it.

I agree with your points, although the risk tolerance of people differ. So what works for A is different for B. And quitting a job is another risk level. And you can´t advice people against it or for it. Like you mentioned, you are married with kids, so this might be a wrong idea. But it could be a risk another is willing to take because She or he is single, has very moderate living cost, and high risk tolerance level etc. In the end, there is no general rule, because people have played the game from both sides and succeeded or failed. DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU: A business is a reflection of It´s maker, not opinions.

The negative responses you're getting are evidence that you've exposed a legitimate issue. Keep up the good work.

You have to add "Start small, think big, move fast". You obviuosly shouldn't fail fast at something that has broad negative implications on your life. But if you can fail at something without consequence, and you will gain important learning, then that is the fastest path to success!

IH has turned into Hacker News, look at all the haters in the comments. This used to be place that built each other up, rather than engaging in peevish criticism.

This is a brilliant, much needed perspective. Thank you for your insights.

The one time I didn't follow the general concept... which in this case... fail fast... I ended up in a startup for close to 3 years. Got significant equity that worth $0. From all sort of metrics (or common sense), that this is not going to work past 6 months...

So do fail fast and learn from it.

Also... the fail fast concept works in America better than most other countries. I have a book call "The Decision Book" and it outlines the differences between Americans vs Europeans (or most other countries). Specifically, Americans tend towards a trial-and-error approach: they do something, fail, learn from this, acquire theories and try again. Europeans (or most others) tend to begin by acquiring theories, then do something. If they then fail, they analyze, improve and repeat the attempt.