Jimmy Wales' Theory of Failure 164
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.'"
Re:Articles about failure being good... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that failure is good for you (although of course you can learn from it), but rather that it's pretty much inevitable, so you better learn how to plan for and deal with it.
For example, the success rate for start-up companies is quite small (10% - I forget), so if you're going to try a start-up it's best not to commit yourself to such a degree that it hurts your ability to shake off the failure and try again.. and again..
There's an interesting book about the start-up experience of AutoDesk (the company that created AutoCAD) called "The AutoDesk File" by John Walker, that says the same thing. AutoDesk's founders never expected to start a CAD software company... but in the end that was the product idea that became successful. The general conclusion was keep trying and let marketplace success not preconceived ideas dictate your level of financial/etc commitment.
Well put, my own list of failures (Score:3, Interesting)
I have started and ran a few biz with various success and a few total wrecks over the years. I totally agree with being able to put a bad idea down fast, in a don't throw 'good money after bad' sense.
I recall reading some stat or quote years ago about how only 1 in 7 new biz make it. So, I needed to start a new biz fast, but could not afford to fail at it for lack of money to anything else. So, I started 7 different ones all at once. 3 of them where complete dogs, and I shut them down in the first couple of month. 1 made money and showed promise, but was just no fun. So I killed that. I was left with 3 working and making money two years later. I killed one that took too much of my time, relative to the money. One took off and has made real money, and the other one is still alive and kicking but takes almost no resources.
Re:A rarity (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't put Apple in that category... Look at Steve Jobs' track record and it's pretty amazing...
Apple, NeXT (sold to Apple for $400M+), Pixar, Apple again (Jobs return and resuscitation of the company via iMac, iPod, iPhone...).
That's a quite of a string of major successes, even if there have been a few product failures at Apple along the way. I'm not sure that Jobs himself has had many start-up failures.
So, it's not right to call Apple/Jobs a one-hit wonder. Maybe he's just serially lucky (SOMEONE has to be at the extremes of the bell curve of any phenomemon), maybe not, but that's a different story.
wildly inaccurate article (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is wildly inaccurate on the subject of Nupedia. They say, "Then he tried an online encyclopedia called Newpedia, a free encyclopedia created by paid experts. He spent $250,000 for writers to make 12 articles. It failed."
They have the name wrong.
They portray it as Wales' project, when in fact it was more closely associated with Larry Sanger.
It wasn't written by paid experts. I believe Larry Sanger had a paid position as editor. I worked on an article for Nupedia, and I can assure you that they didn't offer me any money.
They make it sound like Nupedia commissioned 12 articles (at some price). Wow, I would have liked to be offered $20,000 to write an article! Actually 12 is just the number that got done (by people working for free) before they gave up and admitted Nupedia was a failure.
My own experience trying to write an article for them suggests two reasons why it failed: (1) The software to run it was mostly vaporware. Nothing worked. (2) It was no fun. I had a panel of people who were not experts in my field, and whom I had to satisfy in order to get the article accepted. That got old really fast. This is of course the exact opposite of WP's instant gratification philosophy. (Well, WP isn't so much like that today, because a newbie who comes in and tries to edit an article is likely to get his edit reverted without explanation. But that's how WP was in the initial barn-raising stage.)