Humble pie.
humbledmba.com
Humble pie.
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: Humble pie.
#2You failed once so you knew what failure was like. Then you wanted to succeed once (as you defined it) so you took the shortest path possible to reach success. Now you know what thats like.
Seems like you were merely doing what we all do in uncharted territory: Calibrating oureslves by testing the extremes then using that as a foundation to refine our future.
Good luck, no reason to be down on yourself.
Re: Humble pie.
#3Was FlightCaster acquired mostly because of its user base or because of its technology?
Re: Humble pie.
#4> By this time, we'd gotten into Y Combinator, one of the greatest startup handicaps ever created. If I couldn't succeed with YC's help, than I was truly incapable.
I used to worry about the exact same thing. I wonder if every YCer has this fear.
Re: Humble pie.
#5Was FlightCaster acquired mostly because of its user base or because of its technology?
Prolly for the engineers like everybody else lately.
Re: Humble pie.
#6Knowing when to quit is actually a big plus. Plenty of people go for broke and end up with absolutely nothing. So don't berate yourself for that.
You see it as mostly luck and I'd agree with that, start-ups are a big lottery. But there is also skill involved and without that skill you'd get nowhere, you need both, skill and luck.
I hope you'll do 42floors in a way that makes you feel more confident about the outcome. Regardless of how you feel today, 20 years from now you'll look back at this first company you were a part of and you'll see it as the best school you ever went to.
Don't knock it, you made it further than most.
Re: Humble pie.
#7Re: Humble pie.
#8You are pretty tough on yourself for being afraid of failure. I feel that the fear is somewhat natural. The difference is how we respond to the fear. It sounds like you are figuring things out pretty well. Good luck on your next venture :)
Re: Humble pie.
#9I really appreciated how candid this article was, but I don't find it very applicable to me.
> I'm not going to let my fear of failure drive my decisions next time around. If we fail, we fail. A startup failure won't affect how my family sees me, how my friends see me, or how my girlfriend sees me. And I'm never again going to let the possibility of failure affect how I see myself.
I feel like this is a lot easier to say after having a success, especially if that success put some money in the bank. Having a healthy fear of business failure is a good thing, as it allows you to see the potential negative outcomes. It's the fear of failure in life that negatively affects decision-making, and it seems unreasonable to expect someone with no history of success and no comfortable safety net to avoid succumbing to that.
Re: Humble pie.
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prolly for the engineers like everybody else lately.
Figures.. their Compete graph shows lack of users, and technology really doesn't sound that complex...
On the contrary - their tech was extremely complex. There was serious technology risk in FlightCaster. Jason's co-founder Evan is one of those guys who exudes technical brilliance: he gives off geek-pheromones that would make an art history major want to talk algorithms with him for three hours. They needed all of those chops to do what they did.
Clarification: they weren't just aggregating and presenting data: they were processing large piles of numbers to predict the friggin' future. And they didn't just curve-fit to do it.