Embrace Startup Failures

Within the startup community, there’s an essential aspect that warrants greater attention – embracing and celebrating failures. In recent weeks, two local entrepreneurs have openly shared their journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced while building their startups.

The first one comes from Adam Steinberg, co-founder of Fetch Truck in the truck rental space. He candidly chronicles the evolution of their business model over the years. Despite raising VC money and tirelessly pursuing different strategies, their journey ended without building a sustainable business. They made the tough call to cease operations, acknowledging that there was no viable path ahead.

From Adam’s post: Without a clear and immediate path for fixing these challenges and restarting growth, we made the disappointing conclusion that the prudent course of action is to wind down the business. We ran out of time.

In the second example, Shep Ogden, co-founder of Offbeat Media Group (OMG) in the social media and virtual influencer space, reflects on an equally impactful experience. Shep recounts the thrill of onboarding big brands, hiring a team, and growing fast. However, shifts in the clients’ own business models led to a significant revenue drop for OMG. Unfortunately, this downturn necessitated major layoffs.

From Shep’s post: We made the tough decision to restructure while the company had a chance to move forward. This was the only way we could guarantee our employees a severance on their way out. After everything the business had gone through, we really wanted that for our team. 

Both these local instances illustrate how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. Even after raising millions of dollars and signing a number of customers, the chance of failure still persists. The call for celebrating these failures does not stem from a desire for more failures; rather, it is rooted in developing a startup community with more attempts. More attempts equate to more entrepreneurs willing to take risks and endeavor to build something from nothing. If we don’t have more failures, we’re trying hard enough.

While failure is not the objective, we celebrate the courage to take risks. Failure is an inherent part of the entrepreneurial journey. By acknowledging and learning from it, we set the stage for the next round of entrepreneurs to enter the arena.