This is a really loose definition of “failed”. His definition of failed seems to be “didn’t take over the world”... but most things don’t. It’d be like saying “John Smith failed at life because he wasn’t a billionaire by age 25”. As a language it was (and is) used in a lot of places, had a lot of offspring, and brought a lot of influential ideas into the world. That doesn’t seem like a failure!
> Words have meaning. They can explain what’s really going on, and suggest what should be done next. The word “fail” accomplishes neither.
I disagree. Failure prompts me to examine what went wrong and what I can change to make an improvement. Realizing that I failed gives me motivation to do this analysis and improve next time.
> There are moments when we’ve truly, irrevocably, fatally failed, and we should say so. If a company has to shut down, especially before it achieved some meaningful success, then okay, we failed.
Wait, what? Why is that not part of some larger iteration as well? Many founders stumble on their first company or two before finding success in a later attempt.
Look, there are small failures and there are big failures, and I agree you can recover from small failures more easily than you can recover from big ones. But that doesn't change the definition of failure. Call it what it is.
Are we reading the same comment? I don't see any dismissal of previous accomplishments. Why is calling this failure a failure bad? You need failures to learn and hopefully be successful eventually.
Not really disagreeing with your contention, but there are probably different applicable definitions of "failure" here. It could be argued doing what one loves is inherently successful, etc. (I'm sure you're familiar with the sentiment.)
Actually he failed, we could say that he crashed the plane into the Hudson River. It's a matter of measure. If he ever do it again, he might do even better ;).
I think that we improve continuously from failure into something that looks more and more like success. Success is very relative to what you are able to accomplish at a time. If failing teach you something, might be it's a success ?
That depends on your definition of failure, and is confused by factors like inheriting wealth... I know at least one world leader who doesn't have any grit at all...
I think we tend to equate failure with not living up to our expectations, no matter how unrealistic they were. Andrew is probably comparing his actual outcome with the potential outcome that was envisioned when Groupon was flying high. He’s not in the three comma club like he expected, or like his (former) peers are. Hence, “failure”.
You could argue that anyone reading this right now on a computer is probably anthropologically successful enough that “failure” is never a fair term to apply to them.
I haven’t really seen him called a failure unless it’s in the context of habitual over-promising and failing to meet frequently and very publicly stated goals. But, the stuff his companies are doing is hard so it is what it is. Couldn’t hurt to be more realistic from time to time though.
> Within a millisecond we hear “hey, none of that. We’ve asked you to be respectful.”
Absolutely this.
Failure is an opportunity to re-evaluate a project, approach, or other categorizable area of effort. It should not be feared. It certainly shouldn't be used to define the character of your life -- as you state, noun versus verb.
When failing is a verb, you get a chance to reorganize. To make better. To build opportunity. It's an absolutely exciting time, if you let it be.
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