Celebrating Failure

1. About two years ago I ran for one of my fraternity's executive council positions; I was a new brother, but fairly confident at the time. I was running against two other brothers, people at the time I didn't consider too strong of competition. Low and behold I end up losing. By a land slide. I wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but I knew I needed to find out.

2. To be elected into a position, we must give a speech. Once all the candidates have given their speech, an anonymous ballot is taken. What I ended up learning later, was that my speech was my downfall. There were two mistakes I make: I sounded very confident, and very inexperienced. I needed to refine my speech giving skills, ones that would be able to mold to a crowd. I also needed to do a better job researching my position, so that I sound informed for future elections.

3. Failure is definitely something that is taught and not innate. This experience I referenced above was one that where I felt embarrassed because I let me self-confidence get the better of me; I let it rule my judgement. I look at failure as a singular moment in your short history, something you can expand upon and learn from. Emotionally, I think it's important to keep our expectations in check; never go into anything (especially an election) with the mindset that everything will go your way. Not only will this keep you humble, but lessen the blow if things don't go as well as you'd hoped.

I'd say I'm definitely more likely to go out of my comfort-zone to get the information and opinions I need. I don't really fear failure, since in the end it could lead to an even better outcome in the future.

My Exit Strategy

1. This puts an interesting perspective on the business' we've created, since the vast majority of us haven't actually started the business yet. With my venture, I think I'd likely run it for about 5-10 years and most likely end up selling it to one of the larger app manufacture's (i.e. Microsoft/Apple). If my name became something of a trademark for this product, might consider expanding into other industries that were related (such as the Amazon Whisperer assignment we've learned about). I wouldn't make it a family business, just because the field my product is in is so vast and dynamic; the knowledge to create their own business would be what I'd hope to pass down.  

2. I picked this time frame because that's its foreseeable lifespan in my opinion, until the next "big thing" comes out of the shadows to makes  my product irrelevant. There would be a point where I can't expand my product any further, which I think is somewhere around the 5 or 6 year point.

3. It definitely makes me think about how much time and effort I want to put into the service/product. If I want an app to take off near the beginning of it's life-cycle, I'll put a lot more effort into it from the get-go. This app will likely have a short lifespan (ranging from a few months to year). Apps that I think could retain popularity will likely consume my attention for several months to year, since I'd want to be sure all the negative cons of the service are worked out in their entirety.