An experiment needs permission to fail. The reason why has nothing to do with the methods and everything to do with the psychology of the experimenter. If the experiment is not allowed to fail, you will always find a way to justify some exception, discount a subset of the data, re-run it over again with a new hat, and then again with your lucky bowling shoes on. It’s very hard to imagine giving your startup permission to fail. »
We are launching polySpectra’s first product at the Cyclotron Road Demo Day next week, and I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake. On Sunday I felt a little bit ‘low energy’, but at the time it was barely noticeable. On Monday morning I was really tired, but it was Monday morning. I told my team I’d be fine after another cup of coffee. By Monday afternoon I realized it was not getting better and I needed to go home and lie down. »
I started materialsGIRL because I couldn’t find an online community to discuss materials science. This seemed like a huge ‘unmet need’ to me, but ultimately I failed to build a critical mass. Here is the welcome message on materialsGIRL for context: Welcome to materialsGIRL - a community enthusiastic about making materials. We encourage anyone interested in learning about materials to join, regardless of your education, background, discipline or specialty. GIRL stands for Group Interaction Reinforces Learning - we hope to develop tools to promote scientific understanding, collaboration & discourse. »
I recently wrote about why I think it is important to share your failures. The idea behind my Rejected… series of posts is to do exactly that. It is not my intention to spite those that have rejected me. Instead, I want to celebrate rejection and thank the gatekeepers for keeping me out. There might be a healthy release in ranting a bit, but catharsis is not my primary objective. My goal is to choose stories that have the potential to meet at least one of the following criteria: »
It is our natural tendency to want to share our successes and hide our failures. In many ways, this is a confirmation bias towards conformity. As a society we celebrate success, there is a clear advantage to portraying oneself in the most successful light. The only problem with this is that we almost always learn more from the failures (both individually and as a collective). Every airplane crash contributes to the improvement of the safety of the overall aviation industry. »