The Truth about a Failing Startup

Dead post (curiously, the account is dead with no obvious cause; perhaps it was associated with accounts that were up to no good?)

zerocool1989 3 hours ago | link [dead]

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. -- Michael jordan

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Having just gone through this I concur 100%. Everything, and I mean everything, now seems just a little bit more achievable. The good things in life feel better, the bad things not as bad. I smile more, and am sleeping better.

A weight has lifted, and I'm slowly regaining energy - almost feel like I might one day have enough again to start on the journey of another startup.

You cant let this failure stop you. Many of the worlds most successful people have failed many times before finally achieving success.

Nor can you let the fact that investors were involved get you down. Investment is about risk, not guarantees. Your investors knew, or should have known that.

Investment is speculating.

The only guarantee you owe them is that you did your best. If your best wasnt good enough this time, so fucking what?

You can only do your best today. Tomorrow's best is different, because you learned from today.

Dust yourself off, reach into your idea drawer, pick out the next one and start again. Maybe it works maybe it doesn't.

Some will, some won't, so what? On to the next. You learn from each attempt.

My thoughts exactly! ...and Paul Graham's too as it seems, as it must be also the thoughts of every realistic investitor. This is a high bet and if that failed antrepreneur is sincere and acted in good faith, it still stays as a candidate future investment in my book (considering also the fact that he must have some experience after his first enterprise).

If

  If you can keep your head when all about you
  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
  But make allowance for their doubting too:
  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
  Or being hated don't give way to hating,
  And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

  If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
  If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
  And treat those two impostors just the same:.
  If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
  Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
  And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

  If you can make one heap of all your winnings
  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
  And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
  And never breathe a word about your loss:
  If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
  To serve your turn long after they are gone,
  And so hold on when there is nothing in you
  Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
  Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
  If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
  If all men count with you, but none too much:
  If you can fill the unforgiving minute
  With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
  Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
  And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling