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Randy Komisar on Failure

Failure seems to be the topic of today.  Came across this gem of an interview with KPCB partner Randy Komisar.  Before you poopoo Randy’s advice because he’s a VC, know that he’s got quite the track record as an entrepreneur (including some impressive failures, most notably GO which is chronicled in Startup).

Anyway, there is a great quote toward the end of this interview where Randy says, “You can learn from someone else’s failure, but the only way to really get your money’s worth is to fail yourself.”

Randy is an excellent speaker.  The full interview is less than 10 minutes and is worth a view for entrepreneurs and investors alike (note this interview was done in 2004).

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Categorised as: Entrepreneurship, Management, Startups, Venture Capital

  • Steve

    Great post and video……Haven’t seen that one before. Timing of the successes verses the failures might be interesting to path. How many people could fail a bunch prior to a big sucess and still have the confidence to try it again (forget get funded!)? I’d guess that people that really can learn productively from failures have experienced sucess already or are just insanely self confident. Having a pile of money in the bank probably doesn’t hurt much either.

  • http://www.joemedved.com joemedved

    Great post! This kind of philosophy is needed to turn things around.

    Here’s a related quote that I just saw reposted:
    “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” – Mulla Rasrudin

    • http://www.altgate.com/ fnazeeri

      Love it! Truer words were never spoken.

  • http://trustleap.com/ Pierre

    “Learning by trial & error.”

    “Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.”
    (Albert Einstein)

    Where do you think you can get experience if not in experiments?

    And not all experiments will end well, not only because you have to perform yourself but also because many others (better installed and funded companies,the incumbants of your industry) have a real incentive at making you fail.

    So, the real challenge is to LEARN HOW TO SUCCEED DESPITE UNFAIR MARKETS.

    And this, in my experience, takes more time than just succeeding into making incredibly good technologies (that is, unless you are born immensely rich, in which case you quickly learn how to bribe people to succeed).

    Good luck all.

  • JACK G

    FOR 63 YEARS I HAVE THOUGHT OF MYSELF AS A FAILURE

    NO MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    AFTER READING, ‘GETTING TO PLAN B’, I HAVE BEEN STUCK MOSTLY IN PLAN A, I GAVE UP IF THAT PLAN DIDN’T WORK OUT, FROM NOW ON, I AM WORKING THRU PLAN A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J…. THROUGH PLAN Z, THEN TO PLAN AAAAAAA-ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

    JACK

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