Dear Startup Founders, It’s OK To Make Mistakes

Tonight I attended the Lean Startup Melbourne meetup and listened to a panel of founders who have all been through accelerator programmes. One of the things they talked about was startup mistakes and I wanted to share their wisdom with you.

Success stories on TechCrunch often give us the impression that startup founders are super confident super heroes who don’t make startup mistakes. (After all would you admit to mistakes on TechCrunch?) However, these guys were honest (and courageous) enough to admit they are human, to the encouragement of everyone there.

These are their words, as I heard them:

“Really no one has a clue what they are doing. When you are in the middle of a startup, you feel like a total fraud. A startup is a series of mistakes that you make, until you stop making them and are successful.”

– Fenn Bailey, YCombinator participant and co-founder of Adioso.

“Don’t worry about what you don’t know – just get shit done.”

– Alan Downie, Startmate participant and co-founder of Bugherd.

And I love this response from Bowei Gai (500 Startups participant, co-founder of Cardmunch (sold to LinkedIn) and now founder of World Startup Report). When asked “What would you do differently next time?” he replied,

“I wouldn’t do anything differently because its okay to make mistakes and every mistake you learn from. So keep on making mistakes.”

Action

The key takeaway here is that it is most important to keep doing stuff as quickly as you can and not worry too much about making mistakes. After all, so much of the startup journey is stepping into the unknown anyway. So embrace it!

Keep on doing stuff and making mistakes!

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About the Author

Susan Jones is the founder of ReadySetStartup.com, helping aspiring entrepreneurs develop both the strategy and psychology to create winning businesses. She lectures in Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University and is passionate about empowering women entrepreneurs. You can grab a copy of her free Startup Blueprint: 5 Steps to Launching your 6 figure business.