Another Fantastic ‘Learn From Us’ Post

I love, love, love the ‘I just failed, and it was hard, learn from me’ posts that are out there.  I wrote Startups Fail as a bit of a rant a few months ago.

This morning, via Brad Feld, I had the treat to read, and learn from, a great post by Roger Ehrenberg about Monitor110.

My favorite bit:

And these bad behaviors were reinforced by an unplanned event that sharply impacted our psyche: being on the front page of the Financial Times. It is hard to call it a mistake since we didn’t seek to get such exposure, but I put it down as Mistake #3. To be honest, this single fact was a very meaningful factor in our failure. It raised the level of expectations so high that it made us reluctant to release anything that wasn’t earth-shattering. It was also catalyst for us raising our last and largest round of capital. So the net effect was that it enabled to raise all this money that kept us far from the customer. Truth be told, we were probably afraid of customers at this point because we didn’t want to disappoint them or look bad. Oh, we’d build something they’d love. We just wouldn’t show it to them until it was done. Ugh. Just so stupid.

Thanks to Rodger for writing this, it is refreshing and honest.

In the ‘bubble’ of 2.0, we must all remember to be humble, see what is happening, see how to react, see how to learn, see how to grow.  Big money works for some, but can be distructive, not always the dream scenerio that entreprenures think of when they think of and plan the next big thing.