The Failure Mantra
Embracing failure is one of the first things you are all told to do once you set out on your first entrepreneurial effort.
Why?
Because the odds are stacked against any new business. The odds of the business being open after 5 years are less than 40%, but this doesn’t tell the full “failure” picture, as a heartbeat does not denote a success.
Failure, and its teaching benefits, are a mantra deeply engrained in the American startup culture.
Let’s look at what two of the most important entrepreneurs of our time had to say on the subject
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life
-Steve Jobs