Fail Faster.

Why failing quickly is a predictor for success.

“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.” — Woody Allen

The word ‘failure’ originated in France as the word ‘failer’ meaning ‘non-occurrence’ in the mid-17th century. Nowadays however, we’ve adapted the word to hold so much weight and rather than simply meaning an absence or lack of occurrence, it evolved to mean ‘lack of success’. Implying that either you succeed or you fail, win or lose, with no in between. However, that could not be farther from the truth.

Failure is inevitable along the road to success and cannot be avoided. JK Rowling said it best, “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.” Failure offers experience and feedback, and is an invaluable teacher if we let it be so.

The old saying goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” A study from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management by lead author and associate professor Dashun Wang, entitled “Quantifying dynamics of failure across science, startups, and security” found that how you fail (and try, try again) determines if you’ll eventually succeed. It highlighted that what ultimately determines one’s path is the extent to which they learned from previous failures and how they applied that knowledge going forward. It’s not therefore about just moving on, it’s about moving forward with newfound knowledge so you’re not starting from scratch. If someone uses the lessons to improve future endeavors, it can lead to eventual success. However, if someone has too few failed attempts or they fail to incorporate the lessons, they will find themselves on the path to permanent failure.

“What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.” — Malcolm Mclaren

Failure should be viewed as an advantageous feedback tool in order to know what needs to be improved while retaining what worked well. So, ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’. The number of past experiences can impact success, but only when the person incorporates the feedback and adds an element of speed.

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, failed the LSAT twice and sold fax machines door-to-door for 7 years before becoming the youngest self-made female billionaire. During her fax machine days most doors were slammed in her face, yet she eventually succeeded big time. Those failures or doors closing, were the physical and intellectual feedback of her attempts. Each subsequent door allowed her to integrate feedback, try something new, eventually keeping what worked and eliminating what didn’t.

Growing up Blakely’s dad used to invite her and her brother to share their failures at the dinner table by asking, “What did you guys fail at this week?”. Instead of being disappointed or upset, he would celebrate their efforts. “What it did was reframe my definition of failure,” Blakely said of the tradition. “Failure for me became not trying, versus the outcome.” ‘Non-occurrence’ or not trying became the failure, instead of ‘lack of success’ or not achieving the right outcome being the failure.

Eventually, Blakely began to find value in her shortcomings. “My dad would encourage me any time something didn’t go the way I expected it to, or maybe I got embarrassed by a situation, to write down where the hidden gifts were and what I got out of it,” she said. “I started realizing that in everything there was some amazing nugget that I wouldn’t have wanted to pass up.” We’ve all made mistakes and we’ll do it again, but as Spanx CEO’s father impressed on her “fail faster” is the new way to fail. Fail boldly. Admit your failure and learn from it, incorporating the lessons and feedback.

“The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” — John C. Maxwell

During our diligence of founders, companies and potential breakthrough technologies we are constantly working to identify winners. What is the best way to do so? Identify a winner and a loser by looking at the quality of their past failures, it’s a predictive power. In running operations at a previous start-up and in guiding founders on how best to run their recruiting processes, we use a technique called Topgrading, in which we go through the potential employee’s or founder’s previous life experience in tremendous detail and extract key takeaways about their personal and psychological style. “Failing fast isn’t just prescriptive; it’s diagnostic”, says Wang (lead author of the abovementioned study). “If you’re not failing faster and faster, you’re in stagnation region and not gaining enough feedback to form intelligent improvement,” he says. (see full article here)

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford

The journey towards success, regardless of how you define success, is full of potential non-attempts or failure points. So, you must consciously choose to fail and to do so quickly. To try and try again. The journey is not just the beginning and end, the success or not, it’s every magical moment and failure in between. That is what life is about, to experience it fully, all of it. Failure therefore is not about the outcome, it’s about the attempt, the experience, the richness of living life fully, taking 100% responsibility, learning from it and starting from a greater position of perspective and experience. That’s what separates the winners from the losers, those willing to fail and to do so quickly. For every winner was once a loser.

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in seed-stage companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and computing.

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