Failure IS an option
Discover more from Mat Venn
Failure IS an option
How failure, making mistakes and accidents are the key to success
“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.”
– Charlie Chaplin
Failure is an amazing thing. Without catastrophic failure, big accidents and making HUGE mistakes, our species would have surely fizzled out. Along with anxiety, failing hard is an anthropological necessity. Let me explain:
Intro
Every single thing you take for granted in this life, is a product of failure or a mistake.
Human beings can only learn by failing or making mistakes. If you always ‘succeed’ or get everything right, then you have no idea where you really are. And nobody really succeeds without first failing. I failed at writing that sentence properly, yet succeeded in making my point (lol).
The best examples of failures allow you to tell a compelling story because we learned so much and grew from the experience.
“Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”
– Henry Ford
A true lightbulb moment
“In the beginning, there was nothing. The Lord said, ‘Let there be light.’ Then there was still nothing. But you could see it.”
- Unknown
I still cant get a clear answer on who wrote this perfect joke. It’s the Genesis of failure, illuminated by hope.
For us Atheists, inventing a practical light source was perfected by Thomas Edison.
Edisons’ teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.”
He was fired from his first two jobs for being ‘non-productive.’
He made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.
When a reporter asked, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?”
Edison replied:
“I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
Ok so Edison was a bit of a bellend. But all that failure led to success.
Chickens
Wilmer Steele was an American farmer in the 1920’s, who kept a tiny flock of chickens used purely for making eggs.
One day there was a clerical issue with her order. Instead of the usual 50, she received 500. This was a frankly preposterous amount of poulet. Not a poutly amount (ok i’ll stop)
This was an unheard of amount, even the largest chicken place in the country had less than 300. Thats a medium Tesco shelf worth nowadays.
With no real returns process defined in the 1920’s Mrs. Steele decided to keep the chickens and feed them by hand in her 16-square-foot broiler house. Once the chicks reached nearly a kilo, she sold over three hundred of them for 62 cents each, and then the following year doubled her order to 1,000 chickens. In just another year there were around 50,000 similar operations to sell chicken meat.
Welcome to the birth of the chicken meat industry. All from an extra zero.
Mould
Penicillin, pretty much the most well known and important antibiotic in human history might never have existed if a certain lazy Scottish scientist had not forgotten to clean his lab before buggering off on holiday.
On a morning in the September of 1928, the tardy Caledonian chemist Dr Alexander Fleming was studying cultures of staphylococcus bacteria in the basement of a lab in St. Mary’s Hospital. He then left on holiday, forgetting a Petri dish near an open window.
Returning from his holiday, Fleming found the Petri dish covered with a kind of mould that you get when you discard a pizza box under your bed. Fleming had just discovered Penicillium fungi, the godfather of antibiotics. Lucky bastard.
Post it notes
In 1968, a Dr Spencer Silver, a researcher at 3M, set out to create a strong adhesive. He failed miserably and ended up creating a weak one instead. He didn't know what to do with it until his colleague, Art Fry, used it to stick a bookmark in his hymn book without it falling out. The result was the creation of the Post-it note. Lucky bastards.
Coca Cola
In 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton was trying to create a new medicine. He failed, then accidentally mixed coca leaves and kola nuts with carbonated water. The result was Coca-Cola. Lucky bastard.
The Slinky
In 1943, naval engineer Richard James was trying to create a spring that could stabilize sensitive equipment on ships during rough seas when he accidentally knocked one of his prototypes off a shelf. He watched as the spring bounced around on the floor, and realised that he had just invented the Slinky. Lucky bastard.
Teflon
In 1938 a chemist named Roy Plunkett was trying to create a new refrigerant, he failed miserably. Undeterred, Roy discovered that the gas he was working with had transformed into a white, waxy substance. This new material also had some remarkable properties, including its ability to resist heat and repel water and other substances.
Roy just discovered Teflon. The bastard.
Viagra
In the 90’s a team of scientists were conducting clinical trials for a new drug to treat Angina.
Their employer, Pfizer had a research facility in Sandwich, Kent (where the Earl of Sandwich invented the ‘Sandwich’
The new drug, UK-92480, was a complete failure at treating Angina. The drug didn't work at all.
However, during those clinical trials, some of the men were starting to experience a brilliant, yet embarrassing side effect. Big erections. Huge hard ons. A plethora of pocket rockets. More wood than a forest.
Not just that but their erections that were firmer and lasted longer than normal.
Imagine going to get your Angina treated and coming out with a boner. For men that suffered with erectile disfunction this was a game changer.
The scientists had accidentally invented VIAGRA. Lucky bastards.
Marvel
In 1986 the *actual* filmmaker, auteur and creator of Star Wars, George Lucas unleashed onto the world one of most execrable cinematic failures ever committed to celluloid.
The film Howard the Duck grossed $16 million against a budget of $37 million. By even the most basic Hollywood standards, a total failure.
Disney tried to sue, citing similarities with Donald Duck.
Its fucking horrific, heres a clip (trigger warning: possible borderline zoophilia)
This legendary flop led to a major change in Marvel Comics approach to adapting their characters for the big screen. Amazingly this was only the second Marvel character on screen after 1944’s Captain America. Iron Man, the movie which was the genesis of the MCU was still 22 years away
Prior to the film's release, Marvel had licensed its characters to various studios without much oversight or control over the creative process. However, the poor reception of the shitty Lucas duck movie made Marvel realise that they needed more control over the adaptations of their characters.
As a result, in 1996 Marvel started its own movie studio, Marvel Studios. Their goal was simply to produce their own films and maintain creative control over the characters. This eventually led to the creation of the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ (MCU), a huge franchise which is now owned by Disney, who previously had tried to sue them for copyright and who also own a similar huge franchise called ‘Star Wars’, which they purchased for $4.05 billion dollars by a guy called George Lucas.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc? Maybe but for sure some meta irony.
Guitar
In the early days of rock music, guitarists were always searching for ways to make their guitars louder and more prominent in the mix. One of the ways they did this was by overloading the input of their amplifiers, which resulted in a distorted and gritty sound.
However, this was initially seen as a mistake and was actively avoided by guitarists and sound engineers who were striving for a clean and polished sound. It wasn't until the mid-1960s that a guitarist named Dave Davies of a band called The Kinks accidentally sliced the speaker cone of his amplifier with a razor blade during a recording session, causing a distorted sound that he liked.
This mistake led to the iconic guitar riff in the Kinks' hit song ‘You Really Got Me,’ which featured a heavily distorted sound that had never been heard before in popular music. This discovery opened the door to a new world of guitar sounds and paved the way for the development of distortion pedals and other effects that are now commonly used in rock music.
Startups
Whether it's a new business venture or an innovative idea, failure is an inevitable aspect of the entrepreneurial journey. The thought of failing can be terrifying, but for founders it is essential to embrace it.
9 out of 10 startups fail. Thats so harsh but fair. Most startups are dreadful.
Failure provides invaluable lessons that can help them grow and succeed in the long run.
Embracing failure allows you to learn from your mistakes and understand what works and what doesn't. It can help you refine your strategy, tweak your approach, and make smarter decisions for your business. Failure also provides an opportunity to reassess your goals, motivation, and mindset.
Recognising and accepting failure is not easy, but it is a vital component of building a successful business. Experiencing significant failures can help develop resilience and persistence. Do NOT shoot yourself, you are the next Steve Jobs bro x
Ok lets wrap this up
Failure is amazing. Embrace it, get some viagra and turn a soft despair into a hard success.
Good luck!