Ben Huh shares his story at Singapore's first FailCon. Photo: Terence Lee
Ben Huh is responsible for much of the world’s lulz. As the founder of The Cheezburger Network, he is on a mission to make the world happy for five minutes a day. He also has a serious side: Through his new venture Circa, which just launched an app today, he wants to change the world of journalism.
But before he started a profitable business that posts cat photos online, Ben had gone through a dark phase in his life. When he failed at his first startup in 2001 and fell USD40,000 into debt, he became depressed.
“I couldn’t leave my house, I couldn’t leave my bedroom. I just couldn’t face the world,” he said at the keynote speech of the first-ever FailCon in Singapore. The burden of losing hundreds of thousands in investor’s money was too much for him to take. Read more
Jeremy Snyder is the CEO of The Sharing Engine with a past work experience that includes 3 other startups. All three startups were eventually acquired but here he shares what he learnt from their several failed, missed opportunities. Jeremy can be found on Twitter: @sharingengine.
It’s become pretty cliche to discuss the acceptance of failure as a pre-requisite for a healthy startup ecosystem. Articles and pundits point out that failure is almost celebrated in Silicon Valley. Some famous angels and VCs won’t invest in an entrepreneur who doesn’t have a failed startup on their resume.
But it’s not the cultural aspects or checking a box that’s really crucial – it’s what you learn from the failure experience. You learn more from startup failures than from a successful startup.
Don’t get me wrong; making it is way more fun than not making it. Trust me – I’ve done both. And I use the phrase “startup failures” explicitly – not all startup failures lead to failed startups.
“I talk about the lessons learned from a startup’s failure to maximize its value, seize market opportunity, or deliver right.”
The enterprise-to-SaaS turnaround
The first startup I joined was the leading localization and translation memory software provider. I was roughly employee number 30 or 40 worldwide. The company was Microsoft’s first venture investment outside the US, and a key Microsoft partner and vendor, and this was in a time when Microsoft really dominated computing. I was there as the company doubled revenue, grew to 250 employees, and took in more than USD 15M in funding. Read more
For the first time in Asia, the US event on failure, FailCon, is coming to Singapore this October 15. First started in 2009 with more than 400 attendees, FailCon now happens across the globe. FailCon Singapore is a one-day conference for technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers and designers to study their own and others’ failures and prepare for success.
The underlying message is: If you are not making mistakes, you are not striving high enough.
FailCon’s goal is to strengthen the regional startup ecosystem and promote failure as an inevitable part of entrepreneurship. Let’s work together to de-stigmatize risk-taking and failure in the region by exploring failure in an Asian context and uncovering how companies deal with failure in the West.
Speakers
The line-up so far looks amazing, with a whole bunch of people flying in from across Asia and the US.
- Lyle Fong, Chief Strategist & Co-Founder Lithium Technologies
- Ben Huh, Founder & CEO, Cheezburger
- Ho Kwon Ping, founder and Executive Chairman, Banyan Tree Holdings Limited
- Patrick Lee, Co-founder alive not dead, previously co-founded Rotten Tomatoes
- Carl Coryell-Martin, Managing Director, Singapore office of {New Context}
- Paul Bragiel, Managing Partner, i/o Ventures
- Dr. Bernard Leong, Vistaprint and SGE (view our team page)
- Gwendolyn Regina Tan, SGE (view our team page)
More to come.
Event Details
When: Monday 15th October 2012
Where: TAB, 442 Orchard Road, #02-29, Singapore 238879
Entry: Paid event.
REGISTER HERE.
This follows two other recent events on failure in Singapore: SUTD’s Fail Week and FailStock. We’re very excited to have more talk on failure in Asia. SGE’s Gwen might also speak at the annual SXSX conference in the US in March 2013 on the culture of Asian entrepreneurs and failure. Vote here if you wanna see it happen!
This Saturday, on the 18th of August 2012, a bunch of folks will be gathering at the National Youth Council Building for an un-conference to discuss a topic that’s more taboo than sex in Singapore society.
It’s about Failure.
If you have a thought-provoking, fresh, or radical idea on failure, join us! We’d love for you to participate in – or better still – lead a discussion on it.
The un-conference will be divided into AM and PM sessions, which you can choose from, with a common lunch break in between. If you would like to join us, let us know. Since we are keeping the group small, spots will be confirmed via email.
We already have three topics for the breakout sessions:
1. How do organizations and groups (as opposed to individuals) cope with failure, and how do we make them better at coping with failure?
2. How do Taibi Kahler’s drivers relate to failure?
3. Them mistakes: Why is it so dang difficult to internalise and learn from them? (AKA: why do smart people keep making stupid mistakes)
Come make this epic #fail unconference, well, epic!
1000 – 1230 AM unconference breakouts + large group sharing
1230 – 1330 Cross-pollination lunch for both AM & PM sessions
1330 – 1600 PM unconference (same format as AM)
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