These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2010 Fall edition. This post is from the Vacío mi Armario team, formed by Alejandro Hoyos and Victoria Arias.
Two weeks ago, we Cerca del Huerto team had to abandon our project of social platform for producers and local food, because we realized the competition with the Generalitat of Catalonia –who just started the project Compra a Pagès- was too hard. Our idea wasn’t valuable anymore. We were quite disappointed to see the project fall because we thought it was a failure, and we considered our 2 weeks work as lost.
And that’s where we would’ve stayed if we hadn’t been introduced to the entrepreneur spirit and the anglo-saxon way of dealing with failures. As we were thought in our first Tetuan Valley session, in the United States, what is considered in Europe a negative point and even a proof of incapacity, is considered there a rich experience, and a special value.
Those ideas made us think and find motivation again in a very short time. We realized that not only could we reuse our work for another project, but also the entire failure of our project could be turned into a good lesson for us. The inspiration made us incredibly productive and we were able to do in one week the work we would have done in three weeks for Cerca del huerto. We built another project, Vacío mi Armario, which has nothing to do with something the government could manage, is a response to a true demand we found after a few researchs, and is a subject we know a lot more than fruits and vegetables.
Today we wanted to share this experience with all those who might be facing failure, or who will be in the future. We don’t know if our project will be successful, but we feel richer now than before we had this problem.
Here are a few quotes that inspired us. May them inspire you!
The richness of failure…
“There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.” Tom Krause
“There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.” Max Beerbohm
“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong” Benjamin franklin
…And its necessity to success.
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Colin Powell
“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Sir Winston Churchill
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Sir Winston Churchill
“You cannot have the success without the failures.” H. G Hasler
