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Jimmy Wales' Theory of Failure

Posted by Soulskill on from the citation-needed dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Tampa Tribune reports that Jimmy Wales recently spoke at the TEDx conference in Tampa about the three big failures he had before he started Wikipedia, and what he learned from them. In 1996 Wales started an Internet service to connect downtown lunchers with area restaurants. 'The result was failure,' says Wales. 'In 1996, restaurant owners looked at me like I was from Mars.' Next Wales started a search engine company called 3Apes. In three months, it was taken over by Chinese hackers and the project failed. Third was an online encyclopedia called Nupedia, a free encyclopedia created by paid experts. Wales spent $250,000 for writers to make 12 articles, and it failed. Finally, Wales had a 'really dumb idea,' a free encyclopedia written by anyone who wanted to contribute. That became Wikipedia, which is now one of the top 10 most-popular Web sites in the world. This leads to Wales' theories of failure: fail faster — if a project is doomed, shut it down quickly; don't tie your ego to any one project — if it stumbles, you'll be unable to move forward; real entrepreneurs fail; fail a lot but enjoy yourself along the way; if you handle these things well, 'you will succeed.'"

11 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Articles about failure being good... by N3tRunner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've seen other articles about failure being good for the creative process, namely the cover story of Wired a couple months ago. The thing is, if these people had continued failing and never had a success, we would never have heard of them. Of course successful people think that failure is good for you: they stopped doing it.

    1. Re:Articles about failure being good... by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Of course successful people think that failure is good for you: they stopped doing it.

      No, successful people and companies keep failing. They just hide it. Look at Google. I've heard they give their employees a fifth of their time to work on their own project that doesn't have to have a customer. So, if that's true, you have to think of how many thousand projects are going on inside Google that never see the light of day. A few of them make it out but it's definitely the shotgun approach to success. Fire enough bullets at once and one of them is bound to hit your target ...

      Successful people keep failing but they use their resources to expand and diversify what they are doing so that they can prune it down to look like their succeeding more often than not. Some companies just outright suck at it and will push a failure all the way to launch.

      Thinking that successful people stop failing is a dangerous assumption. You don't get to the top and from that point on never suffer a setback or have to kill a project early because it's not working out. Knowing when to do that is what makes those successful people successful. Wales says it should be early and often.

      --
      My work here is dung.
    2. Re:Articles about failure being good... by lawpoop · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course successful people think that failure is good for you: they stopped doing it.

      What you are saying here is that failure or success is more or less a choice, an activity you do. You could actually go out and succeed or fail, by sheer choice.

      I think what these 'successful' people are saying is, "Look, I didn't do anything different in the times when I failed or succeeded. It looked like a good idea, I worked very hard, and nothing came of it. Then, on another project that had similar looking prospects to the failure, by chance it succeeded. So if you don't persist through failures, you will likely never see the success, which is more the case of 'fortune favors the prepared'."

      --
      Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
      -- Pablo Picasso
    3. Re:Articles about failure being good... by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or rather: "Don't be afraid to fail". My more entrepreneurial friends all have had several failures, but most decided to stick with trying out their new ideas. Some managed at some point to turn one of their ideas into small but successful businesses. On the other hand, I have had several ideas for a business, but I have never had the inclination, energy or guts to put any of them into practise, thinking "that idea isn't good enough...". In other words, afraid to fail.

      Another thing to remember is: "don't be afraid to think big" (or fail big, perhaps). Apple, McDonalds, Google, Dell and others have grown from small enterprises into big corporations. Some of that is luck, being at the right place at the right time and all that, but not all of it. And there are many similar small successes that have failed to cross over into the big time, or failed to even try.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  2. 'Fail Often, Fail Early' Is Not Just Wales' Mantra by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This is a really old mantra in the business world that I was indoctrinated with when I partook in R&D for a Fortune 500 company.

    Oh, and everyone's got their own version of it. I've heard people correct me when I said "Fail Early, Fail Often" and they say that the order matters. But you'll hear three concepts in these phrases:
    • Fail frequently. This can also be said "fail often" and simply means "accept a lot of failures."
    • Fail early. Don't invest a lot of time into what you're failing at and just accept the failure and move on. Just as long as you don't get hung up failing all the time (like Wales said). Also have heard it said as "fail fast."
    • Fail cheap. This might be derived from 'fail early' as time is money. But this is the third optional part you'll hear from investors and businessmen.

    So the ultimate incarnation I've heard of this is "Fail often, fail fast, fail cheap."

    Now for the warning: if you take this too much to heart, you see people axing everything. And from the technical point of view, it sucks. And is demoralizing. Another thing is you get really really sick of hearing it and just being the silver bullet response to "why can't I do X?"

    --
    My work here is dung.
  3. As a failed entrepreneur by OgreChow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another real challenge is being able to continue to fund failure. Always seek external funding before you think you need it! When you are forced to put your rent on your charge card your tolerance for failure decreases significantly.

    1. Re:As a failed entrepreneur by BigSlowTarget · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bingo. To summarize: spend lots of other people's money.throwing crap at the wall as fast as you can until something sticks. Alternatively, be rich, dabble at things and have fun. Not really realistic advice for most people.

  4. Re:You have to LEARN from failure by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    One of my favourite Alan Kay quotes applies to this article:

    If you're not failing 90% of the time, you're not tackling interesting enough problems.

    It was aimed at academics, but it applies equally well to business.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  5. the Journal Nature disagrees with you by openfrog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The parent is right and should have mentioned that the comparison has been made by no other than the journal Nature.

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
    (unfortunately, not full article, another reason to appreciate community efforts like Wikipedia)

    Encyclopedia Britannica protested publicly and asked Nature to retract itself.

    Nature said OK, we will check our facts again. They did so and confirmed their original results.

    I am not surprised to see comments like those of the grandparents reappear. What I find worrisome is to see that they get modded insightful.

    Wikipedia is accessible everywhere in the world, to billions (I am tempted to write "billions and billions"...) of people.

    It is a game changing accomplishment.

  6. And drink a pint of whiskey every day by paiute · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This type of anecdotal philosophy is useless. It is the equivalent of asking a 100 year old man what the secret to his long life was. The answer is never, "Well, I just happened to be a couple of sigma away from the mean in the normal distribution of human longevity". It is always like "get up early every morning, smoke a cigar every night, drink a pint of whiskey every day, etc."

    For every anecdote there is an equal and opposite anecdote. It's like a law or something. What about the tale of Bruce and the Spider, where the King of Scotland is inspired by a spider after losing to the Brits six times to go out and try again? According to Jimmy Wales, the King should have packed it in after one or two.

    If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
    Don't throw good money after bad.
    etc.

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  7. Douchebag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wales didn't found found Wikipedia alone, though he does his damnedest convince the world that he did. He's just a typical douchbag marketing businessman who wants to take all the credit for the work of others.