Failure is the magic sauce in entrepreneurship, it’s the magic sauce in innovation.
In the venture business, we look at thousands of business plans every month. The majority of them will fail, the majority of them will go out of business, but its the few that succeed that really change the world.
And you have to be prepared for that, as an entrepreneur, that on average, you’re going to fail. And not to take that too deeply, to realize that that’s okay, and luckily at least in America, there’s a culture that welcomes that; that says its okay to fail, especially in an entrepreneurial endeavor.
Embracing failure and failing early enough are positive aspirational goals. As venture capitalists, we often argue that we should often fail early enough to learn about new industries and learn to do what we do.
From an interview with Steve Jurvetson