Want to be a success? Then you’ve got to learn how to fail. At least that was the mantra at the second annual FailCon, which brought together 400 entrepreneurs in San Francisco to learn from their startup failures.
The day-long show featured panel discussions and smaller discussion groups where entrepreneurs recounted their failures and how they learned from them.
“It’s not simply that failure helps you learn. It also makes you stronger,” said panelist and investor Esther Dyson of EDventure. “Once you’ve failed and come back from it, you’ll never have that fear of trying something new again.”
Other advice given included:
- Learn to recognize if your business is failing. Often times executives can be too close to the problem to notice it, according Dyson.
- Practice integrity, and fail gracefully. Don’t sign long-term deals if you know you’re going out of business in a couple of days, and don’t borrow money if it won’t help anything, said Guy Hirsch, CEO of recruiting firm SayHired.
- When angling for a last-minute buyout, hold your cards close, according to Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures. One of his entrepreneurs accidentally let slip how much cash his startup had left, so the buyer just waited until the company failed and bought it out at 1/10th the price.
- Keep healthy personal finance habits. Kumar said he usually looks at how an entrepreneur handles their personal finances to get a sense of the state of how a startup handles money.
