Get Back On That Horse

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And again. And again. That was the message of perseverance coming out of FailCon, a conference in San Francisco where the message of the day was, it’s OK to fail.

But more than just being a safe place to air your missteps, the conference had established firms tell tales of repeated failure to help the start-ups in attendance from making the same mistakes, SFist.com reports.

The meeting included notable names like PayPal founder Max Levchin who told NPR, "The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of OK. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn't fail. It still didn't really feel great, but it did OK. Number five was PayPal." And the rest is Silicon Valley history.

And Cassie Phillips, the event’s organizer, told SFist.com, "Just the idea that your first company bombed, and you get back on that horse, is a huge sign for a VC."

But if you haven’t reached the stage of a Google or Facebook just yet, don’t worry. PayPal’s Levchin told NPR the best way to lessen the pain of failure along the way is to get a co-founder. That way, you always have someone else to blame.

Photo courtesy Nina Badiey via Flickr.