What to Do When You Fail & the Story of Nick Woodman (Gopro)

If you’ve ever seen footage from a GoPro camera, you’ve seen the work of Nick Woodman. Nick founded a company called Funbug, a marketing company that merged marketing with gaming. If you’ve never heard of that company, you aren’t alone – Funbag was a failure that ended with millions of capital lost. However Nick didn’t quit, he learned and went on to found GoPro, now the word’s largest and most successful action camera producer.?

Starting a business that truly breaks new ground carries significant risk, uncertainty, and inevitably things that don’t work. When we accept a startup into Wildfire Labs we expect that we’ll try things that don’t work, and sometimes ideas ultimately don’t pan out. However the people in these startups get a lifetime of experience on how to deal with things that don’t work – and the ones that ultimately succeed are the ones who figure out how to deal with failure.??

Here are some principles that will help you identify when things aren’t working and what to do when they fail.?

1. A failed idea doesn’t mean a failed person – When an idea you try doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you fail. It means you learned something. People who win don’t get de-motivated by failure, they rapidly incorporate learning into their thinking and move forward. As a leader, don’t punish people whose ideas don’t work – gauge how well they do in incorporating learning to rapidly improve.?

1. Know when you’re failing – Before you begin something new, define metrics that will tell you early on if something isn’t working. That leads me to what is possibly the most important point:?

1. Fail fast – If something isn’t working and it’s clear from your outcomes, don’t keep going and hope things will get better. Immediately begin adjusting your approach or abandon the plan if it’s clear something foundationally isn’t working.?

1. Fail forward – When something doesn’t work, take time to understand the underlying causes and rapidly incorporate what you learned into trying again. Failing forward or failing up will help you level up your game quickly.?

The saying goes “I never fail – either I win or I learn” holds true here. When things don’t work and you learn you’re building a competitive advantage. If another company decides to try and build something similar to you, they will likely have to crawl up the same learning curve you did. By failing decisively and rapidly improving, you’re building a “moat” that will keep others behind you. Doing this over the long term can build a sustainable competitive advantage that will help you build market share and long-term growth.?

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