To The Lone Entrepreneur: Make Your Failure Public

I think the title is a needlessly negative frame wrapped around a very good idea: let people know what you're working on. It helps promote a sense of responsibility about the work before you have, e.g., a finished product or customers. (After you have a couple dozen people who paid you money and would be left in the lurch if you quit, that tends to be all the motivation to keep going you need. Well, for me anyhow.)

If you've told your friends and family what you're working on, if your project should die you will have people asking you "Hey, whatever happened to...", which will motivate you to not die. For similar reasons, I recommend having a blog, as if you didn't have enough reasons to have a business blog already.

You don't even have to do a launch party -- I just told my dad. He told me my idea was, ahem, crazy and that I should go get a job at Google. (Best bad advice ever in terms of motivating me.)

I didn't throw a launch party, but I have been incrementally building my latest project (http://votereports.org/) completely in the open, starting from the first weekend it was started and launched (which happened to be a Startup Weekend event).

I'm about 2 months in now, and while I'll need another 2 or 3 before I'm ready to promote it, just having it out there has been an excellent motivator, for one simple reason:

When I talk about the site to someone new, rather than just explain the idea of the thing I'm working on I have to also tell them that it's up on the web. And when I do that, given its current state I have to follow with a whole litany of cautionary notes to the effect of: it's not done yet.

So instead of basking in the glow of the nobility of my not-yet-public project, for now and until it's ready to go, I'm be making well-justified apologies every time it comes up.

I'm looking forward to not needing to make those apologies, and working in part to see that happen. These uncomfortable moments complement my longer-term vision for the project, as the immediate, recurring motivation I need to complement the that farther-out achievement of completion.

So I agree, as the submitter says: Make your "Failure" Public.

edit: And in the spirit of what's above, you should know that the site's visual design has been the same since the first weekend, and will be totally revamped sometime in the near future.

As a lone entrepreneur in a city that is very un-entrepreneurial (even anti-entrepreneurial in some ways), I think this is a good idea assuming you invite the right people to the launch party. You need people who will celebrate your risk-taking adventure with you as well as be there in a positive way when things get very hard or if it ultimately fails.

Although I know the title is denigrating, it actually is good advice. My first effort failed miserably, causing me to slink back to a nine-to-fiver I hate. Once I came to terms with why I had failed the first time and shared those deeply personal things with others, I find my second time around is much clearer and focused. And those who are informed and care help to remind me of what not to do as much as what to do. In some ways, they are like silent co-founders.

Sharing my startup with my friends and family somehow inspired a sense of legitimacy in me. They wished me luck and it resulted in some unexpected networking.

I'm in the exact same boat, sans the party. Lone entrepreneur building a few projects, with a few live and the big one not quite ready for people to start using it yet. I have told people about my projects but so far I haven't really thrown myself out there. I like your title because it encourages us to take a risk, and to not fear failure, but to face it head on, and hopefully avoid it in the end.

That is a very simple, yet great, idea. I'm definitely doing this, something to look forward to.

I always celebrated my failures.