Fail forward

It took me almost two years to finally talk about the end of the Ava Women story.

But I pulled myself together last week for the Swisspreneur podcast at the Swiss Startup Days with Silvan Kr?henbühl and am sharing the recording also here. (-> Look for from VC funding to bootstrapping)

I talk about the last-minute cancellation of our Series C term sheet. The unexpected collapse of our financial Plan B. The sale to Femtech and their subsequent layoffs and bankruptcy. The fact that we did not return money to our investors, employees, or founders.

Basically. We failed.

And failure is incredibly hard. And it’s taken me a long time before I now felt ready to speak about it. I was ashamed. I felt guilty. I grieved and I questioned myself. I felt like I let my team, my investors, my board, our customers – and women overall– down.

Ava has always been more than a company to me. It was my values embodied in an organization. I role modeled female founders and women’s health innovation. My failure was a failure for these causes that continue to mean the world to me.

Now two years have passed. I started Expeerly a video review company, with wonderful cofounders. Gave birth to my second daughter and say my first one grow into a toddler. I had time to reflect.

And I’ve decided to start talking about Ava. Not in a hushed voice anymore in private one-on-one conversations. But openly. Boldly.

Because it’s time we start talking about failure. Especially in the European Startup Environment.

Why?

1)???Because failure is the price we sometimes pay when we dare to do something big. ?

We all love to throw around terms like innovation, disruption, and moonshots.

But if we want a true startup ecosystem where the impossible is made possible, boundaries are broken and status quos are permanently changed, then we need to allow for risk. And allowing for risk means normalizing failure.

Startups, especially venture backed ones, deal with terrible odds. They are all or nothing games and professional investors usually expect just one out of every ten investments to work out. And that one investment will hopefully return enough to cover for all other failures.

But we need founders who are undeterred by these odds. Who put their health, finances, times, personal relationships, and ego on the line for ideas that have a tiny chance of succeeding. ?

So talking about failure doesn’t will it into existing. It simply reflects reality: Many fail, some win. But just because not everyone wins the Olympic Games doesn’t mean we just want the winners to give it a shot in the first place. Where would be the fun in that? Or progress?

2)??? Because if we silence failure, we increase the fear of it

I have seen countless people giving up their entrepreneurial journey before even starting it because they were afraid they might fail.

I see founders limiting their ambition for the fear that they might fail. Or they go through the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey anxiously and panicked, worried they might not make it out as the success they think they need to be. ?

There is a reason founder mental health is generally considered problematic.

A child doesn’t just stop trying to walk because it worries it might fall. So why do we lose that spirit later in life?

The outcome of Ava – for our investors, our board, our team and our founders – was in many ways the worst-case scenario all founders are afraid of. Over the last 2 years I have recognized that talking to founders openly about my failure is allowing them to feel seen, heard and less alone.

Talking about failure will destigmatize it. The monster under your bed is less scary when the light is on. ?

3)??? Because failure offers as much learning as success

In many clinical experiments we learn as much from what hasn’t worked as we learn from what has.

The same is true for startups. ?

For a shamefully long time after the exit of Ava I assumed that we (or at the minimum I) just weren’t good enough.

Today I know that that’s not the case. In fact, I firmly believe that the Ava Team over the entire Ava existence, my Ava co-founders Philipp, Pascal and Peter, the board members we had over time and specifically Barbara and Amir who supported the exit, our investors and other contributors were nothing short of fantastic. You were driven, accomplished, visionary, hard-working and kind. And I am beyond grateful to all of you.

Jointly, we filled cities of #Avababies. We built and deployed technology which has leapfrogged existing cycle tracking methods. We built a brand and community that put women’s health on the map. We reached double digit million revenues. And so much more.

But thinking we weren’t good enough also meant there wasn’t much to learn from what we did. After all – we failed. So what was there to learn?

The notion is wrong. Even if it is human.

Firstly, no startup is black or white. Many founders can attest that a startup is for a long time like Schr?dinger’s Cat. As much alive as it is dead. You only find out when you sell the company and lift the exit valuation lid. Success and Failure are separated by a very thin line. So, there isn’t ever everything either good or bad in a company – it’s a mix. You can learn the bad elements of a successful company or the good elements of a failed company.

Secondly, there are distinctive things to learn from failure that can’t be learned in successes.

If we silence failure, we limit our opportunities to grow and learn.

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I started this post with saying that I believed I let female founders and founders in women’s health down as a role model. But there is a role model I can be, regardless. No matter my past or future successes. The role model that normalizes the conversation around failure.

I hope my story will encourage others in this startup ecosystem to stand up and share their stories.

So we can jointly de-stigmatize failure by talking about the real odds, learn from one another and build the vibrant, risk taking, game changing startup ecosystem we need to face the challenges of our time. ??