A number of people wrote me about my ”Why Wesabe Lost to Mint” post to ask about this line: “…nor do I agree with those who obsess over failures for years after (as I have done in the past).” A few said they were currently agonizing over a past failure and asked how I had gotten out of that state. Here’s what I wrote to one of them:
Sorry to hear about all this. I would suggest working with people you like and who encourage you, even if not on a startup project, and doing some small form of “shipping” that could lead to positive feedback.
After the last failure, when I was in the same mode you’re describing, I took a job at O’Reilly Media. Tim O’Reilly has always been extremely encouraging of me and many of the other people at O’Reilly are similarly encouraging. During that time a did a lot of speaking at O’Reilly conferences and wrote quite a bit for
http://radar.oreilly.com/. Both of those things got me some positive feedback, and with the encouragement of the people around me I was able to start making progress on what became Wesabe. Positive feedback snowballed for me, and pushed me out of my funk.
I’ve always found that shipping something, anything, is the biggest help. Even just shipping a blog post.
Hope this helps and good luck.
For whatever reason, I haven’t ever gotten to that state of obsessing over Wesabe’s failures. I mostly just moved on and started thinking about what I wanted to take away from the experience (positive and negative) and what I want to do next. Maybe now I have confidence that shipping something new will work.
Thanks, by the way, to everyone who responded to that last post. I was overwhelmed by the response and I’m glad if it helped others.