It’s said that history is written by the victors — or at least, by those who empathize with the victors — so it makes sense that much of the press coverage about the tech industry concentrates on the big wins instead of the losses. But the truth is that the business people best known for being “successful” have also had their fair share of failures along the way. They just don’t discuss them very often.
That silence about failure is something that needs to change. People who are working through struggles in building a business should know that they’re not the only ones who have had dark days.
So we asked some of the most prominent people in the tech industry to talk about a time in their careers that was marked by epic failure and dark days. We got five really good stories, and we’ll be airing them over the coming days in a series we’re calling “Fail Week” (yep, it’s our own answer to Shark Week.)
In this first episode, hear legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper talk about the time that the government knocked on his door about the $6 million he owed them — and put him on their “dirt list” of people they were watching. According to him, before you succeed, you must “fail and fail again.”