Failure and What It Means

Three years ago at the All Things D Conference, Steve Jobs had an amazing quotation about his past failures. Its something I constantly try to remind myself when looking forward.

"There’s a lot of things that happened that I’m sure I could have done better when I was at a Apple the first time and a lot of things that happened after I left that I thought were wrong turns, but it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter and you kind of got to let go of that stuff and we are where we are. So we tend to look forward.

And, you know, one of the things I did when I got back to Apple 10 years ago was I gave the museum to Stanford and all the papers and all the old machines and kind of cleared out the cobwebs and said, let’s stop looking backwards here. It’s all about what happens tomorrow. Because you can’t look back and say, well, gosh, you know, I wish I hadn’t have gotten fired, I wish I was there, I wish this, I wish that. It doesn’t matter. And so let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday."

Today, Chris Dixon (who has become one of the most respected new tech minds in NYC) posted the following about  his past failures and everything he has gotten from them (http://cdixon.org/2010/09/12/getting-rejected/) It reads as follows:

"If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough

My most useful career experience was about eight years ago when I was trying to break into the world of VC-backed startups. I applied to hundreds of jobs:  low-level VC roles, startups jobs, even to big tech companies.  I got rejected from every single one.  Big companies rejected me outright or gave me a courtesy interview before rejecting me. VCs told me they wanted someone with VC experience.  Startups at the time were laying people off.  The economy was bad (particularly where I was looking – consumer internet) and I had a strange resume (computer programmer, small bootstrapped startups, undergrad and masters studying Philosophy/mathematical logic).

The reason this period was so useful was that it helped me develop a really thick skin.  I came to realize that employers weren’t really rejecting me as a person or on my potential – they were rejecting a resume.  As it became depersonalized, I became bolder in my tactics. I eventually landed a job at Bessemer (thanks to their willingness to take chances and look beyond resumes), which led to getting my first VC-backed startup funded, and things got better from there.

One of the great things about looking for a job is that your “payoff” is almost always a max function (the best of all attempts), not an average. This is also generally true for raising VC financing, doing bizdev partnerships, hiring programmers, finding good advisors/mentors, even blogging and marketing.  I probably got rejected by someone once a day last week alone. In one case a friend who tried to help called me to console me. He seemed surprised when I told him: “no worries – this is a daily occurrence – we’ll just keep trying.”  If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough."

What I find so interesting thing about both of these messages is that they touch upon what I see as the two most important aspects of failure: 1)Don't dwell on the past and look to the future (Jobs) 2) Failure helps you mature and learn (Dixon). Putting these two perspectives side by side make each more powerful together (ha, the sum of the parts is stronger than them standing alone). These views on failure can be valuable to anyone, whether in your personal or professional life. And if you don't fail, well, I guess you are a robot (I could not think of a better insult).

And since I like to add a video to everything. Here is what I believe is Steve Jobs' most inspirational moment (but note, I am biased):