“Maybe have a long hard think, is this really what you want to do?”
I’d asked Shak, a massively successful investor and advisor, for help. I’d told him how I had no developer, no investor and no money for our half-built app. And that was his response.
Pissed me off.
I sit back and think about failure.
In the last six months I’ve been hunting for a developer to join Story. I’ve had a bunch of people show interest and then disappear. We even signed one guy into the company as an equal co-founder. It got that far! Then he got a promotion at work and bailed.
There’s now a few things out there in the same vein as Story. Medium, Steller and Storehouse. None of these guys were around when we started, now they’re here and with a load of investment.
Did we fail?
Nah. We didn’t fail, we just stopped.
Like, a half built car isn’t a failure. It’s just half built.
We didn’t stop because we failed, we stopped because our investor left us. Because we ran out of money. Because we can’t find a developer. Because…
Then it hits me.
I’ve always regarded failure as this final death-like thing that comes at the end.
But that’s not failure. It’s not a big full-stop at the end. It’s a thousand real on-going things that you ignore, overlook or simply can’t see.
I have failed. And not once, but over and over. I failed to get Story to the point at which people could viably use it with our initial investment. I failed to find a developer to join our team after our investment ran out. I failed to create an attractive business plan and pitch for funding.
I always assumed if Story was going to fail it was because it, as a product, was going to fail. As in, people would use Story, not like it, so therefore it failed.
I never assumed it would be me that failed Story.
So maybe Shak is right.