Summary: Today I was joined by Cassandra Phillips, entrepreneur and organizer of several conferences, most notably FailCon. Concentrated on learning from failure, FailCon is a unique event that offers a humble learning atmosphere where possibly all mistakes won’t have to be repeated by every entrepreneur. More details on FailCon10 can be found at: http://failcon2010.com/ Listen to the episode in the player below. This episode includes a special offer included for our listeners. Member highlight for this episode: Qubrit “a revolutionary approach to creating, exchanging and keeping business cards.” Here’s some quotes from the episode: “to do a conference specifically on failure, was quite different. I was surprised by how many people actually wanted to speak.” “.. so, a lot of companies I fear, when they entrench themselves in Silicon Valley culture, they don’t understand their real users. They just hear an echo effect from everyone around them, who understand life exactly like they do.” “If you don’t let your people fail, they will never innovate, they will never try anything new.” “There’s a common statistic tossed around, that about 7 out of 10 startups will fail. A lesser tossed around statistic, that I’m starting to spread, is that 10 out of 10 startups will at least encounter a failure.” “‘I don’t know if this is going to work, no one has ever done it before, it might fail terribly, but my community is going to accept that and they’re going to support me through that failure because I tried something new’. Which is a much healthier outlook on things that, well this sounds kind of cool, but I’m not going to do it because if it fails, no ones ever going to support me again. We should be much more willing to support someone who is adventurous and thought provoking and pushing boundaries, than someone who just stays in the box that they know is safe.”
