The writing is on the wall for a global economic slowdown, and tech entrepreneurs will be severely impacted. The dot-com crash of 2001 is…
The writing is on the wall for a global economic slowdown, and tech entrepreneurs will be severely impacted. The dot-com crash of 2001 is still etched into my memory, as I had helped launch a game tech company that nearly died when the capital markets seized. We went from five people to 30 and back to five, and by struggling, scrimping, and executing well, we managed to survive the downturn and sell on the other side.
Since then, I’ve worked with thousands of aspiring founders as a mentor and angel investor. Most early-stage entrepreneurs have minimal experience failing — and there is no easy playbook for learning from these mistakes in a systematic way. I was living proof: when Apple sherlocked my venture-backed startup last year, all the terrible feelings from 2001 came rushing back.
We are often told to “Fail Fast,” “Break Things,” and “Fail up,” but no one really teaches you how to handle the emotional fallout when things don’t go the way you planned. This matters because riskiest things you do are highly unlikely to work the first time, and the psychological toll can be significant.
So if failure is the best teacher, it is important to learn how to fail well so that you can succeed. After looking at many failures — both mine and others — I’ve adapted a famous psychological schema called the Kubler-Ross model (a.k.a. The Stages of Grief) to help you process your feelings if (when) things go sideways.
In the early stages of a startup failure, you will be in denial. This is due to the “stubborn genius” myth, a pervasive belief that great genius has to keep persevering when the world says “no,” even if it means going alone.
