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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

This whole 'we didn't fail' thing is just feel-good nonsense.

While they did indeed 'show that it doesn't work', they failed to create a company, and they failed to produce money for their investors. Those investors aren't saying 'Well, that was money well spent.' They are saying 'That was a failure.'

The fact that they are willing to invest again is a tribute to the company's handling of the situation and apparently technical know-how, not a sign that the investors are happy with the outcome.

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I agree with most of what you say, but (probably because I come from academic research) disagree with the spirit. This sounds a lot to me like a grant propsal:

   Team: "Hey, we think <Algorithm X> is an untested and potentionally hugely powerful way to filter spam.
         Our test script did awesome. We want to bring it to scale and make a product out of it."

   Investors: "Hey, that sounds like a good idea."

   <Months Later>

   Team: "Nope, <Algorithm X> is a dead-end. Here's the remainder of your seed money."

If they failed, then company failed before anyone ever invented in them. They failed when they decided to even try the idea out in the first place. The investors failed by backing a technology that wasn't going to work.

The product was a failure, but the team and business weren't necessarily failures. I can defintely see why a company would want to re-up. Both sides would have obviously preferred bringing cash in hand over fist, but I'd say that this outcome is far more positive than having a product that works and a business that fails.

It's true, but feel-good nonsense is sometimes a tool to get up and try again. It's hacking your own motivation, to use a popular (or maybe by now 'cliche') analogy.

I'm not usually a fan of 'self-help speak', but since I had some good experiences where it helped me, I'm not as negative as I once was.

As mentioned in the post "Of course we would have preferred it if the solution would have been perfect, but at least we had the chance to give it a try"...

And how is that not failing?

When you fall you've failed at walking. But we all know that this is part of learning to walk. We can focus on the fail or on the process or learning. You obviously only see the fail.

Failure is not just a setback. A doctor has no problem saying if a child failed to learn X by Y age there may be a problem. That said there are ranges of failure, and handing money back to investors before you completely run out is a better option than running a company into the ground with nothing to show for it.

When people invest money in you and you shut down the company with half the money gone, you've failed.

Sometimes it's that simple.

The investors got more than 50% of their investment back; this doesn't happen very often with failures.

    They are saying 'That was a failure.'

But there are lots of failures of lots of startups and as an investor you're betting on a few winnings among lots of loses. Investors may actually be happy with this outcome simply because it could have been a lot worse.

"Investors may actually be happy with this outcome simply because it could have been a lot worse."

-> kill me right now.

They failed. Come on.

I feel like the message here isn't so much a failure to accept failure, but more of an early, total acceptance that they were failing and allowing that insight to stop them wasting more money, rather than holding on for dear life...

But focusing on the negative really isn't constructive and will only lead to bitterness. Looking on the positive side helps you get back up and try again.

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