Don Dodge is a must have speaker at every startup conference, period. Don addresses the topic ‘Failure’. Failure is not only the biggest reality of the startup world but also the most under addressed and if there was a startup bible most of the content would come from the process of failing.
About Don – presently a developer advocate at Google and startup veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks.
Don works at Google and bluntly, I was not impressed in the first 5 minutes of his address as he over emphasized how awesome Google was. I may disagree on a personal bias, but moving on Dons take on failing and its importance was just awesome. It is this understanding of failure that Silicon Valley is built on.
Some quotes from Don’s speech
“In the valley we look as failure as ‘Experience’ and value it” and “Success is a lousy teacher”,
Brief takeaways
Failure = Experience. Failing is a start-ups best friend and teacher and a process that comes before success. The more number of times you fail the closer you are to success, its maths.
In the last 5 years I have attended over 80 startup conferences and events in Europe, UK, USA and Asia but no speaker in all of these conferences directly addressed the most relevant startup topic ‘Failing’ and ‘Why it is important’ though there was some mention about it briefly. Kudos to e-nnovations at Poznan, Poland to get Don to address this topic.
At the end of the day startup conferences are all about fuel for start-ups to succeed and a better understanding of failure is simply rocket fuel for startup success.
About Author: Ashwin Bhambri is a startup founder from India relocated to Warsawe, Poland. He is part of the GammaRebels startup accelerator program and Founder of Resmesh
