There is Nothing Like Failed Founders, They Are Just Founders Failures

There is Nothing Like Failed Founders, They Are Just Founders Failures

There is this ‘mantra’ we keep hearing from everywhere ‘Silicon Valley’ startups – “fail fast, fail often”. A lot of people have come to challenge this saying and assume that this gives them – the startups - the propensity to fail without putting in enough effort to keep the startup alive.

You would agree with me that this doesn’t seem the case in Africa where you have the word “fail” as a big disease that if one finds himself/herself in, results in a big stigma. That person automatically contributes to the knowledge of some ‘thought leaders’. This activity opens up wisdom long hidden crying for expression. And when you open all social media platforms, everybody seems to have something to say, an advice to give on why that person failed.

Anyway, this gives birth to more analysers.   

So, for a moment let’s change the word from ‘failure’ to ‘fails’. Let us try to separate the business from the person i.e. the startup from the founder(s). After all, that is what it is. The startup is supposed to be an entity separate from the founder(s) who is also another entity.

If this is true; why do we call founder(s) whose startup failed a ‘failure’, when in reality they failed at that startup and probably have some successes at other things – maybe as a husband, father, friend, other businesses etc.

Buffer.com did a good piece on some failures from successful founders. You can read it here.

Instead of us hearing “Tom failed. We will say “Tom fails”.

This is how we should start seeing it:

-       It should be a failed startup; not a failed founder 

-       It should be ‘the founder fails’; not the ‘failed founder’

-       It should be founder of a startup; not startup (when referring to the individual)

Do you know Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft failed in one of his startups before he became a success with Microsoft? Imagine if they had called him a failure, and he had gone to ahead to live like one. Here are some stories that might interest you – Founder Fails and this.

If you check the startup scene, you would find many founders who had many fails. But went on to build something great. There is the story of Sim Shagaya, the founder of konga.com; he actually started something like iRoko TV; iNollyWood that never became successful. His successes after that? – dealdey.com, konga.com, eMotion etc.

It is interesting what you get to find at the Ycombinator! Hacker News page.

This piece is written for those in the scene; the initiated. The non-initiated may not be able to get a hold of it, which is the reason they are still looking while the world over are scrambling to invest in the African system.

Well, this is meant to be a very short post. And the message is “we should stop calling startup founders failure”. It should be the “founder fails”.

The difference?

Founders failures: he is a failure who had failed à this brings his personality into play – a personality of failure.

Founder fails: things that didn’t work out with him à this separate his personality from the failed startup.

NOTE TO FOUNDERS 

And a note to founders, you are not a startup neither are you the startup. You founded a startup. You are a founder who can ‘found’ many other startups because your head is filled and pumping with ideas. If this happens to you, will you still call yourself “many startup”?

Like, “Hello my name is Tomi and I’m many startups”.

No! You will say “you have or a founder of startups”.

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