When failure sometimes means success on the startup journey

My yet to be titled autobiography of a successful feminist entrepreneur

I am an overachiever. I have always been driven to do more, be better, work harder. I thought at some point in my life, I would feel it…successful. Like I had made it. Yet, what I didn’t realise was that for perfectionists there is no top. Your mind keeps moving the bar over and over again.

Perfectionism is a game you can never win.

Becoming an entrepreneur taught me that life, much like a start-up, is cobbling together the pieces of something you believe in and throwing it out into the world to iterate upon. Not a perfectly constructed puzzle, but just a building block to add to, take apart, and sometimes burn to the ground. I think this may sound much more inspiring than it feels because when you are knee-deep in to-do lists, you are arguing with your co-founders for the umpteenth time about what the exact problem you are trying to solve is, or selling yourself at a networking event hoping to connect in some meaningful (really financial) way to someone (or anyone) is utterly and wholly exhausting.

When you start the entrepreneurial journey, people love to ask, “when are you actually an entrepreneur?” Some might say pursuing a business idea, raising a round, exiting big, or being wealthy enough to dress like a homeless teenager. For me it’s simple. I think being an entrepreneur is failing and then turning around and asking yourself…ok, what next?

Having recently failed in accelerator programme, I realise finally that I feel comfortable enough to say (with great conviction) that I am an entrepreneur. Who thought failure would finally help me realise I am successful. During my six months I came across intellectual, financial, emotional, structural and founder walls. Rather than just hit them, I smashed them in a completely spectacular form. I did most things I could in order to succeed. I pushed on determinedly when people had little faith in me. I learnt as quickly as possible, and asked for help every time I needed it. I compromised upon my ideas (and sometimes my values) because maybe I didn’t have all the right answers. I worked harder and longer than I have before.

And I failed.

For six months, I dogmatically pursued one problem, one solution, one vision. Everything else in my life was placed on hold and shoved into a tiny recess of my mind so that for the first time in my life all my energy, will, and capacity would be focused on succeeding. All or nothing. This was it.

I think you can imagine what happened next. The only thing more terrifying than breaking, is talking about it. It takes a certain kind of courage and let’s be honest insanity to dare to be vulnerable enough to say the words, “I’m not ok.” But I wasn’t. I stopped feeling, sleeping, and eating. My determination to compartmentalise my personal and professional lives (and let’s be honest problems) made them bleed in to each other where it was hard to recognise which was hurting me more. The more my personal life collapsed (and my god was it burning), the more I pursued my business. The more challenges I experienced in the business and in the accelerator, the more I thought I deserved the struggles in my personal life. I was not ok.

And I may not be fully for some time still.

But those words have been the most utterly relieving and strengthening thing in a way I could never have imagined. Acknowledging how I was feeling has allowed me to grieve for the dreams of the life I had imagined for myself, and hopefully succeed in the one I am living right now.

When I started the accelerator programme, I was trying very hard to make something of myself. To let go of the person I was and be the best version of me. I had myself convinced that a lifetime of struggle and hard work came down to one last chance, one last email, one last relationship.

And that pressure was intolerable.

With my broken heart in one hand, crushed dream in the other, I booked a ticket home to a place a thousand miles away that I hadn’t lived in for years, where honestly I felt like a stranger. And in a packing frenzy surrounded by all my shit, and endless rolls of tear stained toilet paper, I realised that I was already living my best self. Yes, you read that correctly. That best self is capable, resilient, determined, and is sometimes just not ok. That best self is still enough if I am unsuccessful, unexceptional, or even regular.

I didn’t need to build a unicorn. I am a fucking unicorn.

I read recently that the universe has the most extraordinary way of making you feel so uncomfortable in certain situations or points in your life, that it forces you to stop and make changes. So that is what I am doing.

Today is day one, and I am asking myself….

Ok, what next?

***P.S. My brilliant friend, and Founder of The Practical Balance Vix, pointed out to me upon submitting this post, that I didn’t really fail. And she is right. The truth is I walked away from a situation that was no longer healthy, away from a business that no longer reflected my values, and away from an idea that success means compromising what’s important to you.