Failing appears to be the new sexy.

Why the romanticization of failure is wrong.

The entrepreneurship world hasn’t changed that much in the last 20 years regarding failure, I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard every failure cliché at entrepreneurship events, some version of “you learn more from failure than from success”, or even going as far as “I rather have failures than successes in my track record”.

On the other side of the coin, we tend to be attracted to big “failure” stories, to the point where we root for a big old fashion crash.

The reason for me to write this post is to attempt to go a bit deeper into why I think this happens, regardless of the moral ground but instead find elements that explain its why.

-Outsourcing Responsability

This is something that I have been noticing in many areas, finding new ways to prove to you and to others that this is not on you, a great example is a simple internet search on: Why do startups fail? the answers are basically others' fault, at first it looks like a vulnerable moment right? but then when you see the reasons… well, the world didn’t “catch your vision”.

Too early, run out of cash, bad partnerships, regulatory, no market need, etc. What about poor execution? Wrong implementation? Lack of skills? which I think are in reality the reasons why startups fail.

I think it’s easy to speak about failure when you can explain that it was not on you, but still, get credited for being honest and vulnerable without assuming responsibility.

-Fake it till you make it

In entrepreneurship occurs the same as in many other industries, some stuff just catches up, think of it as the classic right time, right place, this doesn’t mean great product, great market fit, great JTBD, great team, sometimes you just match the need for a poster child or a success story, timing and location, right?

In music is easy to spot them, J Balvin, had no musical talent, no artistic talent, but still, today is a best-selling “performer” without any capacity as a music producer, singer, or musician.

Well, the same happens with startups, particularly those that mix a couple of elements (as in any other industry), arrogance, too many resources invested, a good story to sell, and a secret sauce, without evident sophistication.

This kind of scenario forces us to take a posture, contrarians who think it deserves to crash since its a fake success “created out of the status quo convenience” whiteout any merit, talent, or sophistication, and the cheerleaders that believe that is the kind of success they could have, believing that pretending is a key characteristic, in this case of a great founder, and much more important than talent or sophistication.

Think of founders that have crashed like WeWork or Theranos, startups that claimed they had a secret sauce when in reality were commodity reselling businesses.

-Being big VS being successful

This is one of two elements that I think makes it harder to stop romanticizing failure, you can be a huge company and still be a failure, Enron, Madoff, Blockbuster, Compaq, and the list go on and on; but still, most commodity reselling startups focus on being big, not successful.

If failure (let’s think for the sake of this post as not profits, no cashflow, no real growth) is celebrated and normalized as something positive, this means, having it every day is no longer a red flag, maybe it even becomes something positive, we are “learning” we are gaining “experience”.

-Amazon Cliché

This is one that has damaged countless founders' mindsets. I’m sorry to break the news but most probably your startup is not going to become an “Amazon” kind of company, but don’t take my word, we can do a quick checklist.

Some of my favorite elements about Amazon are:

1. They start by doing something that was very unusual (to say the least), no one in the world was doing it at scale.
2. They built proprietary, which means they didn’t “replicate” or outsourced anything.
3. They built an integrated business, which means an ecosystem based on their own beliefs, technology, and rules.
4. This is my favorite, they built focused on sophistication in technology, marketplace, integrated supply chain, payments, ads, etc. They did not think about building “fast or convenient” at all.

So, as you can see, Amazon is a very unusual case, which basically believes in building a huge PROPRIETARY infrastructure, believing that one day will be an ecosystem. I use capital letters for proprietary, to try to differentiate ownership from craftmanship. Amazon was built to create transactions and dynamics that didn’t exist at the time.

This is why, when a company tries to explain its failure at profits “by quoting” amazon’s case, it doesn’t make sense, since 99.9% of the companies are not comparable at all with Amazon, particularly if you are just taking advantage of a minimal improvement on a standard transaction, applying commoditized technology.

And yes, I know, the “startups growth path” requires losses and investments, yes, but one thing is sure, the path to profitability is not something to figure out later, it is the most important element of a startup and the most complex, and critical task of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Conclusion

The reality is, failure sucks, there is no evidence at all that you learn more from failure than from success; actually, evidence shows that you learn from every process, as long as you are aware of it, regardless of the final outcome.

Being a founder is hard, but the thing that makes it harder is not failure is a culture where success is usually faked in such a way that is hard to find and celebrate your wins.

There are startups that celebrate hundreds of millions of dollars of investment but are failing in every way, profits, culture, NPS, reputation, JTBD, product or service quality, and still portraits themselves as highly successful, and most of the players on the ecosystem align and pretend that same success.

At the same time, startups bringing profits, happy employees, and clients are disregarded because they don't match the stereotype of “success” that most people like to see. We are celebrating the J Balvins of entrepreneurship… and that is sad, when we could be celebrating talented founders building things that matter, not because of their funding, but their quality.