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Why We Need More Failed Startups in Boston


I can’t remember the last post mortem or “dead pool” article that I have read about a Boston startup. And yet, I know they are out there. But why is it that as a community we do not talk about or even celebrate our failures?

Startups have a 90% failure rate. Chance are you are going to fail and it’s going to suck at first. But imagine all of the knowledge that you have obtained since taking that initial leap off the proverbial cliff. Information that no money can buy, or college or large company can teach you. I am talking about first-hand, living-in-the-trenches knowledge. From your first failed focus group to your last failed investor pitch and every no in between. From the sleepless nights with your founding team where you try to solve problems that at often times seem unsolvable. And maybe they are unsolvable, but there is only one way to find out. Try. Jump off that cliff and learn to fly on the way down.

I am extremely lucky that my job is to learn from all of you. I hear the constant trials and tribulations; what worked, what didn’t, what was messed up, what should have been done and so on. And yet, I feel as if that information is private. I am only told these things “off the record” because founders in this city are afraid to talk about their failures. And I cannot understand why. You should be more afraid that you are failing your colleagues because you may just hold the key to the problem they are experiencing.

As a city, we only choose to talk about the successes, we very rarely embrace the failures. And yet these failures are likely 9 times more important than any startup success story. For example, instead of offering advice on how to raise money, tell the rejection stories. Share with other entrepreneurs all the no’s, where you dive bombed and what really didn’t work. These tidbits of information are more helpful than any “how I grew a successful company” story.

In being fair, I will offer insights on our first project here at Streetwise Media, Pinyadda. We had some great success stories at first – winning a Demo God award and getting the first couple thousand users. But like most consumer facing sites we fought a constant uphill user acquisition battle. And one example of a big failure was our initial on boarding process. Upon signing up for the site it was too confusing to get up and going. We failed at walking our users through the product, so eventually new sign-ups dwindled and we brought the site back into a closed beta and now use it as an internal lede generation and collaboration tool.

Now, every time I talk to an entrepreneur building a consumer site, my first piece of advice is to make sure their sign up process is simple, efficient and clear. Offering them advice on how we obtained users or how we won over the Demo crowd is trivial, the real information is in our user acquisition failures.

I know there are thousands of entrepreneurs out there with gory failures. Failures that if brought into the open would help strengthen this community. So why not share these and help out our trench fighting colleagues? Talk about your risks and fears in public. We can only grow so big if we are always riding high on our successes, we need some Belichick humble pie every once in a while.

If you are brave enough to publicly disclose some of these stories, please let us know in the comments or submit a guest post. Your hardships and experiences need to be out in the open.

via ifttt