Access to funding, talent and the culture of failure – These are the attributes that are the envy of governments and startup ecosystems around the world who are trying to replicate Silicon Valley.
In Silicon Valley failure is another notch on the startup bedpost, (after being lean and pivoting), it is a mantra, a badge of honour, worn with pride where the more startups you’ve failed at, the more likely you are to succeed.
Paul Graham, Mark Suster and other valley investors publish endless blog posts teaching startups to embrace failure and there’s even FailCon– an entire conference where you can learn how to fail fast.
First world problems
The problem with this celebration of failure is that it’s not real world failure, it’s first world failure.
It’s “Waa, we only raised $5million instead of $10million” failure. It’s “Boo we only got Dave McClure instead of Paul Graham as an investor” failure.
It’s *stamp feet* “Our original idea didn’t create revenue so we pivoted and spent the rest of our funding on making an app where you can bang with friends” failure.
Statistically it makes sense, nine out of ten startups fail and entrepreneurs have to use trial and error to learn from their mistakes until they get it right.
But they have not failed in the real world meaning of the word. Yes they may have to change their product or raise more money or ditch their original plans but they are not dead or defeated, they are simply iterating and sculpting as they go.
Most valley entrepreneurs have not experienced real world failure; failure that is largely experienced by the majority of the world’s population and at it’s worse, often results in death.
Real world failures
The global food crisis is a good example of real world failure. The US child obesity endemic is the result of catastrophic failure. The global water crisis is a disaster and about 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity which is a pretty big fail in my opinion.
Lack of healthcare, disease, war and famine, the list can go on and millions counted who are experiencing failure in the true sense of the word everyday.
It’s great entrepreneurs can admit when they are wrong and save money by calling it quits on a revenue model that’s never going to work, but this should not be done in the name of failure.
Failure should not be thrown around like a cheerleader’s catchphrase. Entrepreneurs should witness first hand real world failure to give them new perspective on the real meaning of the word.
Perhaps then Silicon Valley can get back to solving real world failures instead of proudly failing themselves.
Hermione Way has been writing about startups, founding startups and failing at startups since 2008. She is a Brit living in San Francisco. You can follow here here.
image credit: flickr/knightfeg