One of my favorite theologians is a man named N.T. Wright. He writes a lot on the “afterlife” and what may happen when we die. At the beginning of one of his books, he makes a point about how our view of the afterlife affects how we live today. In other words, what we believe about what happens after we die completely frames how we live and behave today.
I bring this up because I have this overwhelming sense that it says something about what founders believe about failure. Meaning, I think that what we believe happens when our companies die says a lot about how we behave today, too.
And companies fail often. We know this. Out of all companies started in the United States in 2014, some 44% of them went out of business by the end of their fifth year. And some of Steve Blank’s most epic research shows that as much as 90% of startups fail when it comes to high-scaling startups, specifically.
Still, somehow, even knowing that most companies fail, what is it that we believe about ourselves when it happens?
- That other people will think we won’t run a company well in the future.
- That other people will think we just couldn’t “hack it.”
- That we won’t get another chance at building a company.
- That we’re terrible, awful leaders who can’t — and…
