"Finding the fortune in failure"

" \n Learn how to embrace failure and make your startup thrive \n \n\n \n In the start-up world we often hear phrases like \u2018fail fast,\u2019 \u2018celebrate failure\u2019 and that failing can be the best thing that ever happened. But let\u2019s be honest: failure sucks. \n \n\n \n At the very moment \u201cthe failure\u201d hits you, often the last thing you\u2019re thinking about are the positive takeaways, let alone documenting the failure \u2013 your heart is pumping faster, your face and ears getting hotter, your legs going so weak you momentarily question if they can even support your weight. \n \n\n \n Failure can be a wrenching feeling. Thoughts and memories of everything you have risked on this venture, and all the promises you have made on the hope of its success come flooding through your mind, bringing with them intense feelings of pain, hurt, loss, anger, vengefulness, embarrassment\u2026anything but logic or rationality. \n \n\n \n However, time does heal, and reflection will heighten your perspective. That\u2019s not to say the pain ever fully goes away, but that the value of the lessons learned because of that pain increasingly outweighs that initial emotion over time. This value becomes apparent in the new found clarity and focus \u2013 plus a touch of the confidence that experience brings \u2013 with which you take on another approach or venture in the future. \n \n\n \n While the initial high of success and winning may be euphoric, there is little long-term learning that comes from it. The emotional reaction to a loss, however, with perspective and hindsight, are far more instructive. You want to understand why you failed, and successful entrepreneurs will doggedly delve as deeply as it takes to understand \u201cwhy\u201d to ensure their next steps add way beyond the value of a win. \n \n\n \n \u201cIf, one day, you look in the mirror and see only success, know that you have in fact learned nothing, any humility has evaporated, and greater failure is on the way.\u201d \n \n\n \n -Simon R Turner, Managing Director, Founder Institute Ghana (FI Ghana). \n \n\n \n The Topic of Failure \n \n\n \n A lot has been written on the topic of failure, and several studies (e.g., CBI Insights) have pinpointed the top three root causes of startup failure being product-market-fit, running out of cash and disharmony in the team. \n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n Extract from CB Insights \n \n\n \n When we look at \u2018failure\u2019 from a distance, it is easy to romanticise and sugarcoat it with inspiring quotes about the struggles entrepreneurs and scientists, such as Walt Disney or Thomas Edison, who had to go through several failures before reaching success. \n \n\n \n But what does failure actually feel like for entrepreneurs, especially in an African context? How did they manage it, and how did they bounce back? \n \n\n \n To look at this with an African lens, FI Ghana held a virtual event with seasoned and serial entrepreneurs who have experienced successes and failures firsthand, with ventures spanning Ghana, Kenya, USA, UK, Nigeria and C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire. \n \n\n \n We dived deep into failure as a potential fast track for finding purpose and success while providing some practical advice on how to manage failure, especially when it comes to losing people\u2019s trust and money. \n \n\n \n Accept failure as part of the entrepreneurial journey \n \n\n \n FI Ghana Mentors and panelists invited us to challenge the way in which we think about failure. It is not something we can control, but is part of the process of becoming a successful entrepreneur, not a deviation from what you\u2019re supposed to be doing. \n \n\n \n \u201cBy default, you\u2019re meant to fail to get where you need to be and, by default, it allows you to reprogram your mindset and get ready for it. Don\u2019t shy away or avoid it but get through that as quickly as possible.\u201d\u2013 Samuel Baddoo, Founder, Fleri \n \n\n \n To build resilience in the face of failure, an important learning and mindset shift required is the decoupling of your own personal success from the success of your startup. That means the failure of a startup or project does not equate to personal failure, but might, in fact, be propelling you to your next personal growth phase. \n \n\n \n The \u201cFounder First\u201d principle, ie \u201cGreat companies start with great people, not great ideas,\u201d is what makes a great entrepreneur, not just your successes but also your expertise built over years of trial, error, success and many failures. \n \n\n \n This is the reason why Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are increasingly talking about \u2018celebrating failure\u2019, because it is inherently linked with expertise. This is true in business as much as in any other discipline. Like physicist Niels Bohr once said, while studying the structure of atoms: \u201cAn expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.\u201d \n \n\n \n Failure is part of any journey, and is arguably what makes it worthwhile, exciting and interesting, just like a Titanic movie without an iceberg would be as boring as watching a cruise ship cross the Atlantic (Sam). A mindset shift around failure is an essential starting point, but how can we prepare ourselves for the time when we hit that iceberg and the cruise ship starts to sink? \n \n\n \n Marco Rovagnati, Innovation Consultant and Founder of Poa Poa Soaps talked about the importance of setting up guardrails and intentionally designing functions in your organisation that allow you to experiment with failure, shifting the narrative from failure to prototyping. \u201cAfter launching several businesses and at least half a dozen pivots,\u201d he said, \u201cI think about failure in two buckets: \u201cavoid it at all cost\u201d and \u201cactively embrace it\u201d.\u201d \n \n\n \n The bucket of things to \u201cavoid at all cost\u201d are those that have been tried and tested, and that you can teach yourself online (which can be immensely time-consuming) or with fast-track, sprint programmes like Founder Institute. admin, operations, customer support, digital marketing \u2013 those are \u201cbasic hygiene\u201d factors in business that are (relatively) easy to get right because they deal with the tangible management of the present. How to go about this is down to you, your team, and company culture. \n \n\n \n In the second bucket are all the future-focused activities, such as new product development, prototyping and testing new features, finding your next expansion opportunity or underserved niche, launching Minimal Viable Products (MVPs) and finding product market fit. This is, by nature, a process of trial and error and it is essential that the \u2018error\u2019 or \u2018failure\u2019 part of the process is not interpreted as \u2018defeat\u2019. \n \n\n \n Make sure you have the right language and frameworks in your organisation to track and manage those processes and make sure you extract all the lessons from each test that you run. See what I did here? I\u2019m shifting the narrative from \u2018failing\u2019 to \u2018testing\u2019. Words matter. \n \n\n \n Josiah Kwesi Eyison, CEO and Co-Founder of the iSpace Foundation encapsulated this concept well when he said: \n \n\n \n \u201cFailure is not static, it\u2019s an opportunity to learn, build and map out the way forward. \n \n\n \n It\u2019s a set of data that you collect as you go on.\u201d \n \n\n \n African culture can often be less experimental and unforgiving, but that shouldn\u2019t make you operate from a place of fear. \n \n\n \n Nana Prempeh from GrowForMe reminded us that yes, mindset matters, but failing in Africa often hits you even harder. Resources (cash, support, trusted partners) are scarce, and Ghanaian culture, for example, tends to be majorly conservative and less open to taking risks. That is one of the reasons why you\u2019d usually find multiple chain stores selling the same products, barely a few feet away from each other. \u201cIf it worked for Kofi, it would work for me,\u201d goes the logic behind this approach. \n \n\n \n Startups, however, require innovation, dogged determination, brutally honest feedback, risk-taking and enough faith to put it all on the line, as well as a systemic shift from being a trader (lower risk traditional business models) to being an entrepreneur (new frontier businesses). FI \u2018keeps it real, all the time\u201d Nana went on to say. \n \n\n \n It\u2019s no secret that entrepreneurship is not for everyone, and that opportunities are not distributed equally across the world, but it is imperative that we don\u2019t allow ourselves to operate from a place of fear, especially when looking at the extremal obstacles linked to our operating environment. \n \n\n \n For example, African startups are less served by outsourcing infrastructure, and tend to have a culture less open and tolerant of failure, especially when capital from friends and family is involved. \n \n\n \n Fear of failing kills more businesses than failure itself. \n \n\n \n Abandon fear and embrace knowledge, read the theory and case studies around your industry, reach out to experts and mentors and critically assess how everything you learn applies to your specific circumstance. Critical thinking is probably one of the most underrated skills of an entrepreneur. \n \n\n \n This is the ability to read an article, attend an event or have a conversation, yet remain aware that what you hear or read is the experience of an individual at a specific point in time \u2013 which may or may not apply to your circumstance \u2013 and being selective about what you take on and apply. \n \n\n \n The reality on the continent is different. You should read the mainstream narrative (e.g. Techcrunch, Entrepreneur, Forbes, etc.) but take it with a pinch of salt. You have to analyse it in context. This is not a quick fix but if you\u2019re driven by passion, you will have (or find) the time. \n \n\n \n Read a lot and study the environment. Don\u2019t go in with fear but don\u2019t go in blind as well. This is learned from experience, which is again a reminder and a great way to sum things up, that \u201cIf your failure is not a lesson, it\u2019s indeed a failure.\u201d (Ogwo David Emenike, The Fortune in Failing: Decoding the Message of Failure). \n \n\n \n The global pandemic has clearly shown that pain happens when you\u2019re not expecting it, whether you deserve it or not, whether you\u2019re a kind or unfriendly person. We can overcome things, we can learn, we can be resilient, and ultimately, we can live to fight another day. \n "

"Finding the fortune in failure"

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