Few people know failure better than venture capitalists. Even the most successful fail much more than they succeed and the best are those, like Vinod Khosla, who acknowledge that their successes are much rarer than their failures. Another venture capitalist well acquainted with failure is Peter Gardner, Managing Director of Wavepoint Ventures, a Menlo Park shop that primarily invests in software, medical technology and clean tech start-ups.
I caught up with Peter earlier this week at the engaging FailCon conference where he spoke on the Failure of Business Models panel. “We’ve had our fair share of failures,” Gardner confessed to me, stressing that one of the greatest assets of Silicon Valley was its tolerance of failure. Sharing Ron Conway’s view on failure, Gardner explained that rather than being born to succeed, great entrepreneurs are born to be able to deal with failure.
This interview is the third in a weeklong series from FailCon about failure. Yesterday, Chris DeWolfe talked about MySpace – one the most spectacular failures of the entire Internet age.