Looking into the eyes of failure | Hacker News Reader

Looking into the eyes of failure

mentalhealthinstartups.com

44 pointsjd_routledge24 comments

> It was the fear of failing (or admitting failure) that lead us to fail, because we were afraid to fail, we failed.

You can do everything right and still fail. That's just life -- it's no fun facing it, but that's the way it is.

EDIT: also, another bit of wisdom from the realm of inspirational quotes:

> There is always doubt. No sane man would deny that. But no good captain would admit it. What good would that knowledge do to the men who are trying to focus on doing their jobs? So we dance the dance. Never was there a caesar who couldn't sing the tune.

Agree with your first point, but somewhat disagree with the inspiration quote. After a decade in the military and seeing some great leaders in fighter aviation and special forces, competency and empathy are the critical traits, not false bravado.

Is your leader good at their job? Do they see the reality of the situation at hand? Will they make decisions and take actions that are required by the mission but also in your best interests too?

As a leader (or pilot/operator) you don’t want to dwell on all the little things that could go wrong or linger on the fact you could die on your mission, but you don’t want to ignore the reality of the challenges you will face.

No one believes in the person who puts their head in the sand. A leader shouldn’t share all the burdens they cary, that’s part of their job, but they also shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking a smile and confident attitude will cary the day.

Think about your team. Be honest with your people. Be as good as you can. Do your best at the task at hand. And then try to smile at whatever comes and say ‘fuck it’. Perhaps the quote is trying to describe that last part, but too many leaders forget the competency and empathy parts, the parts that enable the whole team to say ‘fuck it’ and run into the breach.

And one of the more famous quotes of a certain starship captain - "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life."

Somewhere in the Bhagavad Gita there is this quote: "You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.". So you have a duty do your best but there is no guarantee that it will result in success. There is still an element of Karma or luck, whatever you may call it.

Awesome quote - gonna add it to the post.

I didn't want the post to be all doom and gloom, just real and honest.

I think your quote could add a bit more positivity lol - where's it from?

"There is always doubt. No sane man would deny that. But no good captain would admit it."

Simple message, don't amplify failure.

Love the quote, Black Sails?

> No sane man would deny that. But no good captain would admit it.

There has to be a limit, though. I think there is a difference between strategically ignore hard situations for morale reasons and simple stuborness.

For some reason, this joke came to mind...

There was this young frenchman NCO who was appointed as Napoleon's aide. The man noticed that his master would, in the wake of a difficult battle, always make the same request:

"Jean-Baptiste, bring me my red shirt".

When he finally gathered the courage to question the Emperor about this curious behavior, the great general responded.

"The red shirt is meant to conceal any blood, so that the courage of my armies doesn't shatters at a critical point in battle, if I were to come wounded."

For years, Jean-Baptiste remained true and loyal to Napoleon, in good or ill. Then, in the wake of Waterloo, with all the armies of Europe allied together to stop them, he knew everything was lost when his master added a second request to the red shirt.

"And Jean-Baptiste, bring me my brown trousers as well".

Don't connect your identity to the business.

In a whole range of ways a business is a standalone entity, including legally and personally.

You'll be a better entrepreneur when you feel that you are not your business. Businesses come and businesses go, some you might own 100%, others you might have a small stake in. Just see them as "things" rather than "you".

Great advice - thanks

I wish investors would stop putting money into businesses run by 22 year olds with no life experience. The human cost of throwing someone this young into the deep end with a sink or swim attitude is far too high.

Truth, but most older folks will not buy their kool-aid.

Exactly. It is even more exploitive if you know this.

hmm not sure I agree on the age or life experience point. In my case yeah, we were a bad bet, but not because of our age.

I wish investors would stop putting money into businesses solving no real problem/with no real vision.

Also disagree on the human cost point, yes it may have cost a lot of money, but I'm certain the value the team and I will go on to create will far exceed the money we raised.

I am not 100% sure you are far enough removed from the situation to make a final judgement. Good luck with your current venture.

> Personally, it could have been considered a great success — at 24 I’d raised $1m in investment, built a team and a tech product which operated at relative scale, I’d learnt an enormous amount and I had an incredible network in the UK startup ecosystem.

None of that is success. Success is taking in enough money to pay your employees, your expenses, and have something left over to put in a bank.

I get so tired of these flimsy companies touting their "success" which is nothing more than money from investors buying things they haven't earned. Just because you aren't profitable doesn't make you a failure, but neither does having investor money in your bank account make you successful.

I think the key word is "personally". That stuff doesn't equal a successful company, but it does look nice on a resume.

I don't disagree with that, but your bullet point cost somebody a million bucks and from the sound of things, a few people are out a livelihood too while he's off to his next big adventure. It doesn't seem like the Author is owning any of the fallout from it.

I don't know, sounds like he went through nine pretty miserable months dealing with the failure, and now is starting a mental health startup to help others manage the mental challenge of startups. Feels to me like he felt the weight of this failure, my read is that the statement about success was himself still trying to tell himself he's ok. Failing in a startup sucks. People kill themselves over that (including a friend of mine). I think we should forgive those who fail, it's a necessary part of the startup ecosystem, and let them move on with their lives.

The way I read it he's building a support group for other CEO's of failed startups, other people with new adventures, flush bank accounts and the kind of folks who write these mostly self serving "what I learned" things. Granted this one isn't nearly as self serving as most, but what about the engineers scrambling to get a job so they can feed their kids? How about the marketing people searching for work to cover their mortgage? How about everyone else scrambling to not lose a car?

We never hear about those people because they're too busy scrambling for a life raft to write long sappy "what I learned" medium posts.

You clearly haven't read any of my other posts. Dealing with failure is the hardest thing I've ever done and seriously affected my mental health. Everyone who worked for us went into better jobs than previously and all I'm doing is trying to help more and more people. You are far too quick to judge and seem very bitter about a lot of the startup BS, which I can understand.

When I talk about the fact that the business could have been seen as a success for me, that is because success and failure are completely relative. Many of the people around me would laugh when I said I'd failed, because they were judging it by how far I'd come and the experience I'd gained.

You're absolutely right the business was a complete failure and we spent $800k of someone else's money to get those learnings', but just because someone was a founder/CEO you shouldn't think they're in a different position to anybody else - both financially and emotionally.

I think the Sanctus idea of treating (in both senses) mental health like physical health has much broader scope:

http://mentalhealthinstartups.com/introducing-sanctus-59a8b4...

It is unfortunate that the current domain name reflects the first niche market for the Sanctus idea, rather than the nature of the service itself, or the more revolutionary ambitions.

One of the key things I worked out quite a long time after my startup failed is that a person can't be a failure. A failure is an event. If it happens you reflect on it, you learn from it and then you move on. Sometimes that means trying again, but equally sometimes you learn that you can't do what you set out to do so you should do something different instead. Sometimes you learn your limits, and that's OK.

Founding startups seems to be a form of self-harming caused by high self-esteem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com