To The Lone Entrepreneur: Make Your Failure Public

Re:To The Lone Entrepreneur: Make Your Failure Public by patio11 on Monday February 01, 2010 @03:18AM (#1092017)

I think the title is a needlessly negative frame wrapped around a very good idea: let people know what you're working on. It helps promote a sense of responsibility about the work before you have, e.g., a finished product or customers. (After you have a couple dozen people who paid you money and would be left in the lurch if you quit, that tends to be all the motivation to keep going you need. Well, for me anyhow.)

If you've told your friends and family what you're working on, if your project should die you will have people asking you "Hey, whatever happened to...", which will motivate you to not die. For similar reasons, I recommend having a blog, as if you didn't have enough reasons to have a business blog already.

You don't even have to do a launch party -- I just told my dad. He told me my idea was, ahem, crazy and that I should go get a job at Google. (Best bad advice ever in terms of motivating me.)

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Re:To The Lone Entrepreneur: Make Your Failure Public by DanielBMarkham on Monday February 01, 2010 @09:15AM (#1092356)

I just told my dad. He told me my idea was, ahem, crazy and that I should go get a job at Google.

My step-dad is 90 and has done a lot of cool stuff. I admire the heck out of him. He's still sharp and has great advice about everything else.

But I've found with startups and technology consulting? I'm better off doing the exact opposite of whatever he says. It's like the world he grew up in had exactly the opposite paradigms from the world he is in now.

So with friendships and sharing comes a lot of unspoken assumptions. Be sure the people you share with or have the party with have some idea of how technology businesses work (or are willing to listen to you). Otherwise you could either get bad "quit now and do something productive" advice , or worse yet, blanket acceptance without an honest critique. After all, partners are also there to tell you that you're going off the rails.

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