A couple of weeks ago, a rodinhooder wrote-in saying lately our stories on trhs have become “soppy”. There are too many failure stories. There are too many struggle stories. There are too many “startups need advice & help” stories.
I agree. They are soppy simply because there isn’t anything sexy about being an entrepreneur! A lot of youngsters find the idea of being a “startup dude” hip and happening and the “in” thing. But when they read these real life entrepreneurial journeys they realise being an entrepreneur is anything but sexy! It involves sweat, sacrifice, sleepless nights and a whole lot of other scary experiences that most of you already know about.
Quite a few rodinhooders have shared their failure stories with numerous learnings for us all. On trhs as well as at the last Open House in Mumbai. To us, these are Learning Stories. They all have some common ingredients – courage, the ability to take risks, persistence, pursuing a dream, the ability to learn & play multiple roles, to be egoless, to admit you are wrong, to ask for help, to identify problems, to realise every idea sometimes is not always a workable business, etc, etc. Perhaps,the toughest part of being an entrepreneur is to let go. To have the maturity to sell a business or shut it down and move on. And the spirit to not only celebrate such a failure, but to say, “I will survive and start up again!”
Each “failed” journey has valuable lessons for every entrepreneur. Which we need to recognise…
Saluting your spirit of Entrepreneurship, we now have a dedicated section for “failure stories”, called Celebrate Failure! As you know, Alok mentioned how he celebrates failure at the India Today Conclave. An idea, which immediately got recognised as one of the 5 Ideas to Change India!
“I celebrate failure”, says Alok Kejriwal
Speaking at the India Today Conclave 2013, the young entrepreneur says there is nothing wrong in aspiring to be a rich person.
If you’ve already shared a “failure story” on trhs – share the link below as a comment – I’ll ensure it is moved to the new category. And if you’ve been thinking about sharing a “failure story” feel free to celebrate it with us!
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If you haven’t read these Celebrating Failure stories, yet… pls do!
I have failed but I’m not a failure
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Some trivia – while googling for an appropriate image for ‘Celebrate/celebrating Failure’ I stumbled upon Alok’s pix (above) and this video link (which can’t be embedded here). There are a couple of other photos from therodinhoods as well! Which made me realise we don’t need to borrow ribbon or balloon or party hat images to depict “celebrating failure”….
🙂
Omkar Nisal
Thanks for the video link Asha.
asha chaudhry
omkar… check this post out – it has all the bits from the India Today Conclave 🙂
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/alok-kejriwal-meena-ganesh-binny-bansal-with-nandan-nilekani-at-i
Rajarshi Guha
Asha, I seriously think that showing failure in startup has become a fad now. Last weekend I was meeting with a group and one of guys said I am on my 3rd start up, The guys looks to be few years out of college ! I felt jealous, being 6 years as a very struggling entrepreneur I am just in the second venture after losing all my life savings , Am I mad ? Even today I read an article on your story the guy passed out in 2013 by the time he has 2 failed start ups, Then 2014 other one and he is in 5th start up in 2015.
I feel we need to define what is a start up and what is failure , these are my takes :
1. We will call a start up a “start up” when all the founders are not college students but doing the start up full time (please be careful about corporate timepass startups)
2. We will call a startup a “failed startup” when it completed 2 years in operation commercially with evidence of bank account transactions/statements or VAT/service tax returns.
3. We will a call startup a “failed startup” when the business could not make money and founders also. Not because the founder got H1 or one of the founder got married to an NRI & moved to UK.
Your take please ?
asha chaudhry
rajarshi,
i get where you are coming from 🙂
i think it’s not just about the definition of a “failed startup”
it’s the attitude towards “failure” that we are talking about. i agree with you, that some youngsters refer to almost anything as a startup and are proud to say, i failed 2 startups and am on my 3rd”. unfortunately, failing is becoming the new “sexy” to those who enjoy the dark side of starting up.
but not everyone falls in that category. i think the attitude is more important. to embrace downfalls just as sportingly as one would embrace a milestone. and not feel discouraged from them. and not to give up so easily. i know if i was in mubaid’s place (the lazy ninja story you are referring to) i would’ve been very crushed 🙁
the whole idea of a community like trhs is to make the entrepreneur’s journey less lonely. and i think it helps when each one of us shares our failures/mistakes (however small or big they may be) as one can learn from these mistakes. plus newbies realise they are not the only dudes making mistakes :))
“celebrate failure” is more about saying, shit happens. and it’s totally acceptable in startupland.
ps: i wrote this 2+ years ago. and in these 2+ years i’ve come across so many youngsters with different issues that i’ve realised merely accepting “i went wrong here. i these are my learnings” is worth celebrating 🙂
pps: if you notice i haven’t placed mubaid’s story in celebrating failure. to me, that was celebrating entrepreneurship in an incredible way 🙂
asha chaudhry
rajarshi,
did you read this in today’s TOI?
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Bolster-your-CV-with-failure/articleshow/48106974.cms
Rajarshi Guha
Thanks for sharing , Good read