There are seemingly so few podcasts and publications about failure stories that it must be a rare and unique idea to start one, right? But the reality is that it's a very common idea. I feature success stories on my podcast (Indie Hackers), and I've been getting requests for "more failure stories" since day #1. I've tried them, and I've also seen a lot of competing websites and podcasts try them. And guess what?
They aren't popular.
It turns out, there's a lot of failure-based content out there. It just never survives or thrives enough to get popular. Hence the survivorship bias illusion that nobody is making failure content.
My theory as to why is simple to understand if you understand basic story structure: Every success story is actually made up of a bunch of small failure stories followed by a small success story: fail-fail-fail-win. People greatly prefer to hear the failure stories of those who eventually succeeded, than to hear the failure stories of those who never did. Not only does it make for a better overall story, but it's more effective to learn from. So I think people are right to prefer this.
I wonder if there's anything to be gained from way that content succeeds while business failures don't? Is it just that startup failures aren't as dramatic? It's not a clear-cut kind of narrative that's satisfying? No idea...
These are all great:
[1] Tenerife Crash for TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RBLM6qO0g0
[2] Tenerife Crash for Pilots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d9B9RN5quA
[3] SL1 Nuclear Accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYle_eI5j78
[4] BP Texas City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goSEyGNfiPM
For example, why did Facebook take over the world and not MySpace? Why did DOS beat CP/M?
Or a non-tech example: why did Amundsen beat Scott to the South Pole? Was it down to technique (e.g. using dogs instead of motored vehicles) or mindset?
Yes, this!
Success stories are fun and all, but there's not much that can be usefully learned from them. The failures are where the lessons are.
"Make your own mistakes, not someone else's."
I often have this feeling when reading "why my startup failed" blog posts (how do they know?!). Which doesn't mean they aren't worth reading!
100% true.
That's why when you learn about other ventures, successful or not, what the founders say are the important features aren't really the part that you should pay the most attention to.
And “What did you do right?” is often informative, regardless of overall success.
I was once told only to take advice from people who succeeded repeatedly at a task. Building a company and succeeding is impressive, but there may be a lot more factors in play than just the actions of the founders. Building several successful companies makes the difference.
It definitely scared me away from investing in my own game ideas.. not sure if that was a good thing or not
As Founders at Work has been mentioned, I will chip in with Coders at Work, which is brilliant and inspired by FaW - it includes many of the OGs of programming: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Progr...
I was living in North Carolina at the time Gmail came out and remember having so much FOMO when it launched and I didn't have an account. Turns out—no one had an account yet! Love the speed that PB operates with.
