
German entrepreneurs celebrating their mistakes - bogle
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43287225
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antirez
Yet I think that while we europeans can learn a great deal of lessons from US
entrepreneurs, the "failing is ok" is one of the wrong ones, together with the
extreme optimism. In Europe there is a tradition of small businesses that
succeeded because of wise moves and organic slow growing. Also if failing
becomes less of a problem I've the feeling that many startups may start with
ideas that are ways too risky. For sure less optimism and being failure-
adverse will make us having less unicorns than the United States. However if
you think it in different terms, this will also lead to having less ruined
companies and bad moments for the people working there, because for every
unicorn there are a huge number of companies failing, and it is not fun when
it happens. After all the need for unicorns is because of investors, while
people can be ok with small or medium sized companies that make them a good
few million dollars to have happy lives.

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m_fayer
The EU needs all of the above. I value its capacity for producing sane
sustainable companies. But it also needs a healthy dose of the SV ethos. Yeah,
that ethos is nuts, high risk and high reward, can chew people up. But it also
produces rapid innovative change, rewrites the rules, and produces incredible
cultural/intellectual/financial wealth. Europe needs its own version of this,
or it will be perpetually playing by American/SV rules. And in a few years,
Chinese rules.

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gerikson
Do you think Chinese companies work under SV rules?

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m_fayer
There's a new batch of SVish companies coming from China. SVish in the sense
that they move fast, spend large amounts of investor money, worry about
profitability/sustainability/legality later, and leverage unproven
technologies and business models. So in that sense, I think so yes.

In the sense that some Chinese VCs are more motivated by the Communist party's
strategic concerns than by profits or idealism, and likewise for some of the
resulting startups, in that sense the answer is no.

~~~
gerikson
Thanks for the reply. I know very little about Chinese business practices in
general.

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mtmail
> at the core of a worldwide movement - with an unprintable name that loosely
> correlates with "Failure Nights"

The name is FuckUp Nights if anybody is wondering

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throwaway2016a
I prefer the term "embrace"... turning it into "celebration" risks making
failure the goal. It is absolutely critical that people be allowed to fail. If
people can't fail they won't take risk, and risk is where real innovation
happens. But we should be careful not to turn failure into the new success.

Respect people who took a chance and failed. Learn from them. Embrace them.
But I'd stop short at celebrating them. Save the celebration for next time (or
5th time) when you finally succeed and accomplish something amazing.

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lnsru
One man's trash is another man's treasure. I wish I knew more earlier about
possible startup failure modes. Sadly only great successes are well
communicated. Nobody writes about failure when partner got cold feet or
development effort was greatly underestimated or product/market fit was
miserable without room for pivoting.

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adventured
Ben Horowitz wrote a decent book about the endless difficulties of start-ups
and business in general [1]. It's not so much strictly failure-learn focused
(eg learning from the results of a failed start-up), as it is challenge-
overcome focused (eg working your way through the never ending beating that is
doing a start-up).

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-
Building/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-
Building/dp/0062273205/)

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afarrell
During SXSW 2016, The Irish (specifically IDA Ireland) held an Irish Wake for
Dead Startups. It was to hear people talk about failure and the lessons
learned thereby.

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s_dev
[https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/03/15/irish-startup-
wake...](https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/03/15/irish-startup-wake/)

I thought it was a clever idea as well. Some of the Tech Ireland things can be
hit and miss but I thought it was good.

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drpgq
As Canadian who spends a fair amount of time in Germany, I've always found
German bankruptcy laws somewhat horrific. Although to be fair the idiots I've
known that went bankrupt personally in Canada wouldn't have been able to do
the same things in Germany they did in Canada.

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gsnedders
Can you give an example of what you find horrific?

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Tepix
Yes, Fuck Up Nights are not specific to Berlin or Germany, are they?

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coolg54321
I am not german but I have observed a general trend with british media/BBC is
they amplify anything that devalues germany/germans in general, not sure why.

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NumberCruncher
German startups are like American beer.

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mmjaa
Flat as hell, mostly tasteless, and bound to leave you feeling like you did
something really, really wrong last night?

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BjoernKW
Since when has the BBC become squeamish about "unprintable" (which itself is a
strange choice of word on the web, by a non-print publisher like the BBC no
less) words like 'fuck'?

It's not like the haven't been using it before:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=fuck](https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=fuck)

