
Why failure doesn't hurt so much with startups (and why you will try again and again failure after failure) - amichail
Although you may encounter failure often with startups, it's not so bad because you are doing what you want to do.  And working for yourself is infinitely better than working for someone else.
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rokhayakebe
It hurts a lot my friend. Have you not received that email from ycombinator
after they made the 40 some invitation calls? Or have you not launched a
product and have 100 users after 5 months (knowing that 95 are from your
friends network)?

That being said, startupreneurs are usually go-getters by nature. It hurts us
more to stay inactive than to to fail. So it is more like choosing between two
pains. THIS (startuping), my friend, is an incurable illness. The only way to
stay alive is do work on something you like. If you do not, you are slowly
making yourself weaker.

~~~
jmtame
I sort of agree.

I've seen a LOT of entrepreneurs with this attitude of "well, statistically,
I'm supposed to fail 9 times before I win on the 10th. So I'm currently
working on my failures so I can get to my success."

I think that's a terrible way to go about a startup. Your startup should be
what your passion is, and not some light-hearted lottery ticket. I've seen a
lot of people who could easily do something great, but they're not even
letting themselves do it. Probably because they're scared. They think they're
not self-worthy or something. So they're just going through all of the
"failures" in order to become worthy of achieving success?

Doesn't make much sense. Just get it right from the beginning, and don't buy
into the mindset that you have to constantly fail in order to achieve. Yes,
you'll make mistakes. You'll probably fail. But don't make it part of your
mission statement.

~~~
s_baar
Yes, I don't understand the people with the statistical mentality. I'd be more
confident in the person trying to convince himself that he was like the 10% or
at least the ones that work out a little bit.

~~~
amichail
The world doesn't revolve around your mentality though. But at least having a
statistical mentality might encourage you to sample the idea space until you
hit on something big. That's better than wasting your time on things few
people care about.

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prakash
"Plan to throw one away, you will anyhow." -- Fred Brooks

"If you plan to throw one away, you will throw away two." -- Craig Zerouni

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brlewis
You're always working for someone else. Startups are for people who prefer
working for customers as opposed to working for a boss. Whether the former is
infinitely better depends on the customers and on the boss.

