Sometimes wins are not necessarily measured with financial success. A company can utterly fail and still represent a win. I had one of those.
I started a self-funded tech company around 1998. This was hard tech, hardware and software. And I was the sole engineer doing all the work. This meant 18 hour days, 7 days per week to get the plane off the runway. Two years later, after booking lots of sales, we finally moved out of the garage and I started to hire people. Yes, I ran this beast entirely on my own for two years. A few years later a large well-known company expressed interest in acquiring the technology. The number being floated was in excess of $30MM.
What happened?
Well, 2008 happened. The economic implosion caused this company to second-guess entry into the market we had pursued --which they intended to do by acquiring us. The deal went from being a couple of meetings away from an acquisition to evaporating in front of my very eyes.
The bad news was that the economic downturn truly hurt us over the next couple of years. I had to shut it down in 2010 and lick my wounds.
This thing went from pouring all of our savings and an incredible amount of very hard work into a crazy idea, executing well enough to get a $30MM+ offer to closing the doors and nearly losing it all in the process.
At the time this felt like an abject failure and a waste of ten years of my life. It took me months to get my head back on straight. Today, looking back, I see it as a success. I took an idea from nothing to close to a massive life-changing exit and did so mostly on my own through hard work, grit and determination. That's a success story nobody can take away from me. I learned a lot along the way and most of those lessons were part of success in future endeavors.
Life can be funny and cruel sometimes. You might think you are going through your darkest hours when, in reality, you are growing a solid backbone that will support the rest of your life.
It’s like anecdotes you hear from religious people during a disaster. “I lost five of my kids. But I’m so thankful that God looked out for me and saved one”
> It’s like anecdotes you hear from religious people during a disaster. “I lost five of my kids. But I’m so thankful that God looked out for me and saved one”
I am glad you edited your comment slightly because it was worse than what remained (which is still terrible and insensitive).
That said, one of my favorite quotes, by Mark Twain is:
"A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way".
Which is to say that it is impossible for most to align with the mind of someone who loses a business, or much worse, a child, without having held that cat by the tail. And so, your comment, while misplaced, is understandable because you don't have a good frame of reference.
Additionally, in my particular case, well, the 2008 economic implosion caught most everyone by surprise. It was like a nuclear bomb dropped. Few saw it coming. Millions of businesses went down. Millions of people lost their homes and jobs. And, while I not, by any means, perfect and without mistake in my life, I find it hard to interpret such a catastrophic exogenous factor as a personal failure. Sure, it would have been nice to have had $10MM in the bank to survive it. Most non-VC companies do not have this luxury. We had five million dollar sale contracts evaporate overnight when our customers, in turn, had their banks materially reduce or cancel lines of credit. We had customers send truckloads of our products back to help us because they were filing for bankruptcy and the courts would have grabbed hold of our (unpaid) products and they would have been stuck in the hands of a trustee for months, even more than a year. Etc.
Like I said, sometimes you have to hold the cat by the tail to really understand.
I posted that 19 hours ago. I couldn’t have made any recent edits…
> I find it hard to interpret such a catastrophic exogenous factor as a personal failure
I mentioned in another reply that the 2008 crash hurt me too. It was definitely a personal failure that I had five mortgages where I owed a half million dollars, put 0% down on four of them and only 10% down on the fifth and I was only making $70K from my primary job at the time and didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
Your original comment, which I saw before the edit, characterized my comment as copium. Someone else responded to that before your edit.
Anyhow, your 2008 failure was, sorry to say, 100% your fault. Perhaps you were younger and inexperienced. We've all made stupid mistakes due to inexperience. Buying five homes with 0% down payment was an extreme gamble. We live and die by the consequences of such actions.
In my case, we were conducting business as usual and then, out of nowhere, the music just stopped...and there were not chairs. Very few people saw that coming. Those who did were focused on the financial world rather than engaged in running a business. This is why so many businesses got caught unprepared for such an event.
I am sorry you lost it all. That's terrible. I lost a home before due to employment difficulties. My mistake in that case --funny enough, young and stupid-- was to buy it with an adjustable rate loan. When interest rates went from roughly 6% to over 12% my world got turned upside-down in a hurry. Like you, I wasn't making enough money at the time to survive that. I lost the house a couple of years later.
Interestingly enough, that's what pushed me towards entrepreneurship. I had to earn more money. The only way at the time was to start an small electronics manufacturing business while keeping my day job.
So, yes, in that case, really fucking dumb decision on my part. Yet, at the end, it launched my entrepreneurial journey, something I am very happy about today.
> Honestly, that feels like copium.
It’s like anecdotes you hear from religious people during a disaster. “I lost five of my kids. But I’m so thankful that God looked out for me and saved one”
It still says “copium”
> Anyhow, your 2008 failure was, sorry to say, 100% your fault.
Isn’t that what I just said that they were my mistakes?
> And not being willing to admit your mistakes and assess your weaknesses means that you continuously make the same mistakes.
And then I went on to admit my mistakes.
In the very comment that you replied to I said It was definitely a personal failure
> Interestingly enough, that's what pushed me towards entrepreneurship. I had to earn more money
And I decided to upskill and I knew when I signed the offer letter at each job, how much I was going to make without any risk.
> Like you, I wasn't making enough money at the time to survive that. I lost the house a couple of years later.
I didn’t say I couldn’t keep my house. I made more than enough to keep my primary home. It was very much a strategic default. I had another house built and got an FHA loan three years to the day after my last foreclosure. Money is never personal to me
Interpreting a difficult event in terms that allow you to move on is not “copium”. we all do it all the time to explain our mistakes and weakness regardless of religion.
I don’t think any of these people are saying “I’m so glad my kids are dead” they are saying they are able to see these unfortunate events in a bigger picture.
What you may be looking for is “sour grapes” - something that was previously desired is now not viewed as highly after failing to obtain it.
And not being willing to admit your mistakes and assess your weaknesses means that you continuously make the same mistakes.
Of course I’m not saying in my original anecdote that people getting killed from a natural disaster was preventable.
In the appropriate threads, I have posted right here what I learned from my many mistakes - marrying the wrong person (since remarried), staying at my second job too long and becoming an “expert beginner” (I’ve done decently for myself since then), failed in real estate around 2008 (since recovered), etc.
You can look at some of my “favorited comments”.
This isn’t bitterness. At 50, I am where I want to be. But if you had asked the 35 year old me - divorced, negative net worth, shitty job with out of date skillset, etc. I wouldn’t have put on a happy face and say I’m not a failure.
>> This isn’t bitterness. At 50, I am where I want to be. But if you had asked the 35 year old me - divorced, negative net worth, shitty job with out of date skillset, etc. I wouldn’t have put on a happy face and say I’m not a failure.
The GP didn't say they thought it was a success at the time; quite the opposite. Aren't you basically saying the same thing, only with a different timeline?
> I grew a lot. And I think my current happiness stems mainly from the fact that I like the person I've become, someone who can fail again and again and again and again and still find a way, for the most part, to be happy.
He didn’t say that his current happiness and success comes from the lessons he learned. It’s more like the lady who lost five kids and kept her faith because it was that God was good to save one not thinking if that were the case was he good for letting the other five die? (see also the biblical story of Job)
Without going into details (again look at my favorited comments if interested, I’m not trying to hide the details), what I learned from my failures is why I think I’m not a failure now - ie I achieved the goals I wanted to achieve - was a direct result of learning from my previous marriage and divorce, doing what is needed to not be an expert beginner - I got my first only and hopefully last job at BigTech at 46 (no longer there) - and was much smarter about my finances.
Ignoring what might be vapid reddit edge: it doesn't seem like it.
The GP would probably do well to see the endeavor as a success in terms of how they should behave in future. Any necessary adjustment would seem to come from the margins.
If retrospect exists to inform future decisions: getting to the GP's point in his business is a useful success signal.
Whatever it is that you're tracking seems less useful toward any question that isn't "am I rich from this right now?". The answer to which is "no". As-in "no shit". It's not useful.
In that case, that goes back to my argument that he is a “failure” based on his own metrics of his personal success criteria. He failed at his goal of being a successful startup founder.
sports analogy time! people like sports because sports defines rules, bounds and how to determine a fair outcome with a winner. These are all limitations that are not at all clear in real life. Some people say "money is the measure of success in the games of business" and that supports the scarface point of view. Others point to the "journey" and talk about life occurring at the same time, factoring in family and personal emotions. Both are useful, neither are completely true.
Hmm.. if anybody feels the blunt force of failure it's them. But they feel it was a success so I believe it must have been. Also they don't need to cope now.
It’s a natural human coping mechanism to make sense of things in a way that allows us to continue growing and finding meaning, even in painful circumstances
Or just realize in the case of my anecdote that shit happens. There is no grand plan or puppeteer behind the scenes.
In the case of the original author, it would be be one thing to redefine success based on changing priorities. But not to pat yourself on the back and give yourself a participation trophy.
Yes success can come out of failure. Failure can also just come repeatedly and then you give up and try something else.
But I think there’s value in how we process and interpret those moments. It’s not about denying reality but finding ways to make it meaningful for yourself!
I started a self-funded tech company around 1998. This was hard tech, hardware and software. And I was the sole engineer doing all the work. This meant 18 hour days, 7 days per week to get the plane off the runway. Two years later, after booking lots of sales, we finally moved out of the garage and I started to hire people. Yes, I ran this beast entirely on my own for two years. A few years later a large well-known company expressed interest in acquiring the technology. The number being floated was in excess of $30MM.
What happened?
Well, 2008 happened. The economic implosion caused this company to second-guess entry into the market we had pursued --which they intended to do by acquiring us. The deal went from being a couple of meetings away from an acquisition to evaporating in front of my very eyes.
The bad news was that the economic downturn truly hurt us over the next couple of years. I had to shut it down in 2010 and lick my wounds.
This thing went from pouring all of our savings and an incredible amount of very hard work into a crazy idea, executing well enough to get a $30MM+ offer to closing the doors and nearly losing it all in the process.
At the time this felt like an abject failure and a waste of ten years of my life. It took me months to get my head back on straight. Today, looking back, I see it as a success. I took an idea from nothing to close to a massive life-changing exit and did so mostly on my own through hard work, grit and determination. That's a success story nobody can take away from me. I learned a lot along the way and most of those lessons were part of success in future endeavors.
Life can be funny and cruel sometimes. You might think you are going through your darkest hours when, in reality, you are growing a solid backbone that will support the rest of your life.
Entrepreneurship is hard. Very hard.