September 2011
2 posts
Santa Claus & Tonight's Founders@Fail
When I was a kid, I was a total pain in the butt. Weeks before Christmas, I had already secreted out every carefully hidden present, delicately unwrapped, and then re-wrapped them because I could not stand the anticipation. I hate surprises and spent most of my free time watching McGuyver, so go figure…so, with that, I’ll give you a teaser for what’s in store tonight-
Surprise #1:
Get to GA...
A meditation on the cuteness of small children
People always think babies are cuter than they really are, especially their own. They overlook the farting and crying while everyone else feigns interest in little Johny’s latest earth shattering progress. Well my baby, Founders@Fail, just celebrated it’s first birthday and I’ll be damned if it isn’t the cutest thing since cherry pie. To celebrate, we’ve got a...
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
2 posts
The Alamo and David Hasselhoff
Brad was preaching to the choir last night when he shared how he evaluates entrepreneurs’ past failures. He made a key distinction between the fact of failure and its underlying causes. I’m paraphrasing, but the gist was: if you failed because you couldn’t build a credible product or made weak hiring choices, investors will judge you accordingly. However, if you executed...
May 2011
3 posts
Failstradamus
In case you too survived Saturday’s Rapture, I thought I’d run a little contest…funniest missed calls in technology history. One lucky winner gets 3 FREE tickets to next week’s interview with Brad Burnham, founding partner of Union Square Ventures.
Submissions will undergo a rigorous analysis including snarf-induce-ability, milliseconds before retweeting, and my own bad judgement…
Here’s a...
The Purpose Driven Failure
A little morning read got me thinking about why I started Founders @Fail… http://bit.ly/mNeFtA… Scott Gerber of Sizzle It! mentions in this article that “setbacks, though painful, will teach you more about business than any textbook, lecture, or mentor ever could” and he’s spot on. The stories and advice you hear at Founders @Fail are signposts. They act as...
Upcoming Founders @Fail
I have not one, but two upcoming Founders @Fail that I’m pretty stoked to announce…
JUNE 1st: Brad Burnham of Union Square Ventures.
Brad is the real deal, a veteran VC who built one of the most respected firms in the business. He’s seen the rise of Silicon Alley from the very beginning, survived the hype of bubbles and backed some of the most innovative companies this town has...
April 2011
4 posts
Last Night's Fail
Last night was awesome. Jon (Betterment) and John (ADstruc) dropped some serious knowledge on Founders @Fail. These guys deserve a lot of credit for not shying away from uncomfortable questions. They’re what make this community worthwhile.
Following up a thread we began last night- how do you know the difference between when it’s time to iterate and when it’s time to just pull the plug?...
The Invention of Failure
I’ve got a special surprise at Monday’s meetup! I’ll be announcing a F@F first and kicking off a challenge to everybody in the room…things are about to get very interesting…
Don’t forget to RSVP:
http://bit.ly/gqEooa
In the mean time, an article by inventor, James Dyson reminded me of why we’re here. This is a man who managed to make vacuum cleaners...
The Modern Condition
Fails,
I have to admit, a recent post left me totally speechless. Usually you come across something that might be witty, insightful, or just plain entertaining, but James Altucher just sucker punched me with his thoughtful candor. I couldn’t imagine a better post on the theme of failure.
There are always more items to check off the to do list, the game’s on, blogs need browsing, pick...
Defining Success
Phenomenal post by Ben Horowitz got my mind churning this morning. Discussing what differentiates successful CEO’s from the rest, he concludes:
“Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be...
March 2011
11 posts
New Founders @FAIL!
I’m hosting the next installment of Founders @FAIL with Jon Stein (Betterment) and John Laramie (ADstruc).
These guys are the real deal. They’ve survived their first year as founders and know what it’s like to pitch the hell out of a room after the wrong end of 72 sleepless hours. They’ve begged, borrowed, and hustled their way through exploding term sheets, critical ...
Building A Community
If my little experiment with Founders @Fail is going to become something more meaningful than a cliched embrace of an ironic topic, it’s going to be because we build a community that provides insight and support as we each struggle with the bumps and bruises of life in the startup trenches. A big part of building that community is getting to know each other.
Mark Davis has compared the...
The Story of Fail
For those of you not maxing out your tech hipster cred with Hashable in Austin all week, I thought I’d commiserate with a few reflections on failure: A comment posted by Steven Kane put a big smile on my face, thought you’d enjoy it: “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” -unknown (posted by Steven Kane on AVC comments) In support of Steven’s...
Transformational Fail
In the mean time, wanted to share a little light reading on our favorite topic… Daniel Markham summed up the reason you’re reading this email and not letting your filter send it to spam: “What’s going to transform the world is failure…” Now, before we get all teary eyed and self-congratulatory for recognizing this little fact, I want to clarify what it is...
Designing for Fail
I wanted to share with you a very thoughtful piece written by one of our members, Jamie Kingsbery, on a relevant topic: designing for failure. In my mind, failure is inevitable. You can live your life trying to disprove my theory, but you will find it to be a frustrating project. The more important concern should be how to extract knowledge from those disappointments in order to inform the...
A Culture of Fail
Thanks to Mark Davis for this little gem from Vivek Wadhwa in praise of Failure: “After visiting Okinawa, Japan, and meeting with global experts on innovation, I’ve come to the conclusion that Silicon Valley’s greatest advantage isn’t its diversity; it is the fact that it accepts and glorifies failure. Like many other countries, Japan has tried replicating Silicon Valley. It built fancy...
Thanksgiving Fail
As you slowly emerge from your turkey induced stupor, I thought I might share a few thoughts on a topic near and dear to my heart: success. We all want it. We work hard for it. But in the end, despite all those late nights, we still find ourselves coming up short. I still live in my same dumpy apartment. I still can’t take my girlfriend on the vacation she really wants. So what the hell am I...
Weekend Fail
For those of you still asleep, stop slacking. It’s a beautiful Fall morning in New York and you’re wasting it. Here’s a wonderful little meditation to spark the creative juices over your morning coffee (courtesy of artist Mike Monteiro for GOOD): Let’s be the boss. Let’s take the boss down. Let’s order too much of something just to see where our limits are. Let’s take a...
Rejection Therapy
Today’s challenge comes courtesy of Kempt. Having done my tour of duty in startup sales where failure is daily fact and one hell of a good lesson in perseverance, I think they’re on to something here… Failure gets a bad rap. Success gets all the headlines, but there are usually a few quiet failures beforehand. The trick is accepting them with grace and learning something...
Go Cross Campus Fail
Last night was a phenomenal panel. These guys are the real deal- they wear their heart on their sleeves and even after everything they’ve been through, they’re as passionate about the idea of social music discovery as they were on day 1 of Haystack Media. If you missed it, fellow FAIL Jamie Kingsbery posted a great summary of the panel: http://kingsbery.net/… This week’s best of the web...
First Fail
Despite rumors to the contrary, I didn’t invent failure. Apparently, the thing has been around for a while. In tribute to our forefathers in fail, I’ll be sharing one piece of literature on this hallowed topic per week. This week’s post comes courtesy of Roger Ehrenberg’s blog Information Arbitrage. Jim Moran, an awesome entrepreneur and member of F@F, shared this with...