OK. I was at a start-up that failed called "Optimal Networks". Optimal was sold for pennies on the dollar to CompuWare (who, to this day, continues to sell the Optimal product line and make a bunch of money from it).
There are many reasons Optimal failed (a dysfunctional founding team, changing the CEO three times, impatient VCs watching the .com boom pass Optimal by).
But the most important lesson I learnt was: start your own damn company. It's much more fun to be a founder than one of the first employees.
Agreed, I think we learn more from mistakes than successes. That's why I the Blogger interview in Founders at Work is my favorite. Getting things right could just be getting lucky, but dealing with things when they go wrong takes true skill and determination.
It probably set in when I went to a conference for journalism related professionals. Everyone was scratching their heads and asking how the hell do we make money from this new new media.
For once I was surrounded by non-entrepreneurs asking tough questions, i didnt exactly have answers to. Entrepreneurs rarely ask each other tough questions (they want to make friends and network). These journalism professionals actually cared about their industry and its sustainability not the hope that someone will buy their company and make them rich.
Hey maybe the idea could still have worked but in a radically different form e.g. some kind of about.com/ adsense content syndication hoover. Maybe it was the focus on high quality content/ journalism that was the wrong direction - I'd encourage you to think about other ways it might work if you started from first principles.
