Ask HN: Are you embarrassed by your failed projects?
Everyone goes on and on about there is no penalty for failure... However, over the years I have launched a few side projects, and I have eventually shut them all down. They were met with disinterest or in some cases only casual interest... the worst part is the people that actually liked your product. they are the ones that always bring it up. has anyone else had similar experiences? also, how do you deal with promoting your next project in light of all the past failures?
50 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadNot if someone directly asks, of course; but in my autobiography the failed projects rather drift into the mists of time. The same goes for most creative people: You hear about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but you never hear about the books he started but never made any progress on.
Success is relative, yet you can measure success. The more projects you've done, the more successful they ought to become (although some variance on that graph is perfectly normal, I presume). If you don't improve in pulling off your projects, you are doing something wrong, and then you should revise on what to improve upon in order to progress.
Having failed before is actually an indication that you're more likely to succeed (relatively).
I was involved in a project that failed because of a moral mistake I made. You could blame it on the culture (my whole team, my boss, my bosses boss, and the director of the organization were all "fired" because of this incident) but I was the one person who could have stopped it. And I didn't.
To be fair, I probably would have lost my job had I done the right thing. On the other hand, I would have kept my integrity and, retrospectively, I know I could have gotten a new job very easily at that time.
I was very embarrassed by that, and it screwed up my life for a while... Hell, I gained 40 pounds as a result.
The big picture is that you have to ask yourself, "What is the cause of this failure?" Sometimes you gamble, sometimes you get a "2-7" with nonmatching suits and you go all in before the flop. People have won the WSOP playing like this... People also lose big playing like this.
Myself, developing web sites on my own account, I've noticed that most web developers (in the sense of a real estate developer) create something that 'maxes out' their potential) and they never make anything that cool again. Personally, I'm trying to be more systematic and gradually make things that are bigger and bigger.
Out of pure curiosity, and for the betterment of all of us here, would you mind sharing your mistake? I accept, that you've grown for the better of it, and I'll promise not to be judgmental.
Like wise, if technology is good, I might be interested in buying some assets
Let me know
Have an awesome and very bright day!! jimmy@inodesoft.com
In that sense, none of them failed, since their primary purpose was to statisfy one of my own needs, and so they did.
However, most of them never gained momentum, I stopped maintaining most of them after about a year, and hardly anyone missed them.
There's one or two where I still get a few questions, whether it's still in development, or "what happened to it?", even after years of stopping work on them - one can either view that as a failure, since the projects were shut down; or as success, since some still remember them fondly.
Being an optimist most of the time, I treat them as success.
I think I'm finally on the right path to finding ways of motivating myself to finish/release stuff, but that's another topic.
When I look back, everything succeeded or failed based on timing and execution.
If the project was a success, I did it for the project.
If it wasn't, I did it to learn and grow.
Either way, nothing to be embarrassed about.
(Am I embarrassed by the code I wrote 3 years ago? Now that's another story.)
I don't think you can repurpose your project as a learning experiment... even if you learned, what was the goal?
I have a company and we set goals, but our overarching goal is to learn. If we fail at meeting a metric there is always something to learn and take forward to the next attempt.
The only failure we define as a company is not setting your goals high enough to push yourself, or not taking your learning forward. That's how you build a culture that is willing to take risks. Defining failure as not meeting your metrics isn't productive.
"I am homeless....people are looking down on me and my daughter...guess I should stop writing this wizard school book"
"I'm a stay at home dad who's failed at tons of iterations as an inventor. Guess I should stop messing with vacuum cleaners"
I try to find comfort in the things that went right and aim to not let it happen again, but it is nonetheless embarrassing.
The one thing I notice is that the more I do these, the more I get ambitious and confident :)
I focus mainly on learning (how to launch/promote).
Typically my list of failed projects informs my pitch about the next one. "My next project is more interesting from my past projects because in my past attempts I learned x"
People often understand taking knowledge from one experience and applying it to the next one. And I would argue that's what you should be doing if you want to better your chances of success.
Your path, your experiences, all tell a story and inform your future projects. It's up to you to make that a positive story.
The majority of the 'public failures' failed for new or unexpected reasons and I have absolutely no qualms about being open about it or analyzing them (in private or in public).
I'm far more suspicious of people that have never failed or that feel that don't want to talk about their failures. Pointing the finger of 'fail' at yourself and taking responsibility for mistakes made is a great way to improve your game and to increase the chances of eventual success.
As for dealing with this when promoting the 'next thing', I don't make any links between projects and I try to keep my person 'out' of the day to day running of any of the projects that I'm involved in, for the most part I'm the invisible man. So whatever failures there were if they might be problematic it does not carry over. But I'm actually not aware of any of that. Most projects, even the failed ones will leave you with the net positive goodwill that results from trying and trying hard.
Failure is perfectly acceptable - if you ask any successful entrepreneur, they likely had a string of failed projects.
However, it's important to make sure that the failures bring your forward rather than setting you back. Make sure that you learn something from every failure, and don't repeat past mistakes.
If your problem has been building a project and then discovering that people aren't interested, do the customer development before you build the product. Or build something that you desperately want to use.
I equate it to the days when I tried my hand at pickup. Sure, 99 out of 100 girls will reject you, but if 1 girl says yes, then it would definitely be worth it. It all depends on whether you can keep on going, despite every failure. The goal is not to be fazed by failure/rejection.
Thats neither here nor there seeing as how you just take it all with a grain of salt, add and apply that knowledge to current projects and keep chugging along trying not to second guess yourself.
However, the code written for some of those past projects; I hope it never sees the light of day. Thats the only thing I'm embarrassed about. So if thats the worst of my issues, I think im doing okay.
Take what's worth saving and leave the rest: mistakes not to repeat, lessons worth learning, and view failures as learning experiences not as dead luggage following you.