The apotheosis of a loser or what I like about failed startups and their founders

Whoever does not understand his past is forced to relive it again.

We cannot determine success or failure. No one knows how to repeat the successes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. But you know, there’s a common saying: “Success is hunger that can be appeased by eating failure.”

According to statistics, only ten percent of startups become successful, which cannot be said about the remaining ninety percent. It seems that, for legitimate reasons, these ninety percent of failed startups can be called “failures,” but that would be wrong. The exact, as I see it, definition would be - "striving for success."

Many work hard, many fail, many lose their jobs, and sometimes money, family and precious moments of life. Ninety percent of the failures are far better entrepreneurs than those lucky ones who "immediately fell victim to." Drawing parallels with the theory of Nassim Nicholas Taleb , we live in a world in which most swans are white and businesses are unsuccessful. Black swans are almost as rare as successful businesses. The thorny path of a successful startup is littered with the corpses of his brothers.

“Business is war,” Konosuke Matsushita proclaimed a little earlier., founder of Matsushita Electric Corporation. Then on the front pages of management textbooks they printed that "all the laws of war apply to the art of doing business." Since then, nothing has changed, and to this day, the "Asian dragons" of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea top the growth ratings. Such successes, in the most direct and immediate way, indicate the effectiveness of the strategy and management adopted in these countries.

What's the secret? Everything is simple. In these countries, with deep respect for traditional philosophy and ethics, built on attention will now fly a bird in the ancient military code "Bushido", and "business is war!"

I admire the unsuccessful startups and their founders, who did not abandon everything after the failure. They continue to work, knowing that in case of failure, only a battle is lost, not a war.

Any well-conceived startup can shoot, but without the experience of failure, it is almost doomed to failure. Collect particles of experience, holt and cherish your failures, they will play you a good service. A successful startup cannot be a blitzkrieg; it is more like a long protracted positional war in which tactical retreats are inevitable. After each failure, conduct a debriefing. The reverse engineering of a failed startup will allow you to understand your mistakes and apply them to analyze a business similar to yours, as a result of which in the next “battle” you are simply doomed to success.

Throwing a coin, you never know what will fall out. You can’t throw all the time on the obverse. Success and failure are linked together as two sides of the coin. If you want to succeed in this game - continue tossing a coin. When? You decide.