08 Jan 10 Europe – learn to fail, instead of failing to learn

A common question asked in the European technology startup community is – Why can’t we build a Google here? What are we missing? We have the skill, the money, the ecosystem, the will, the ability and the dream. The Techcrunch article about the closing of Popjam a startup founded by the UK star entrepreneur Alex Tew (founder of milliondollarhomepage), gave the answer. The lengthy discussions there say it all.

We have not learnt how to fail and to respect people who fail and learn from their failure. This is a common theme I have observed and experienced in Europe. And we go even further, give no encouragement to someone who has failed before and wants to try again. Getting a startup up and running is hard enough and when the community who claim to be part of this ecosystem work on getting such people down it is really sad. In Britain we seem to go further, there is such harsh personal attacks which makes one think twice before putting themselves out there. I have seen many personal attacks played out on twitter and other blogs widely read by the startup community in UK. Is this an inherent culture of journalism like “The Sun” being played out by all the right one? An open discussion yes, but why get personal? Should we not grow up and appreciate people who want to make it on their own. And like the silicon valley – accept and embrace failure so we rise ahead. Unless we do that we will never be able to build great companies in Europe and especially in UK.