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Life Lessons
What You Can Learn From Successful Failure
“Shame clouds our memories, rewrites history.”
So says Lauren Kay, Y-Combinator graduate and founder of failed startup Dating Ring. Reading Lauren’s essay about her failure inspired me to come clean about my shame.
I started an institutional money management firm with literally zero assets under management.
I was one of the few women of color to own her own firm in the mid ’90s. Over the following 25 years I grew Daruma to $2.5 Billion under management. It was a huge success.
I closed it 2019, walking away with nothing.
I did not sell it or monetize it, a cardinal sin for capitalists. I paid off a $600,000 lease liability and walked away with nothing. I could have sold, but only if I agreed to indentured servitude. My grandparents did that in Hawai‘i’s sugar plantations. Not me.
I felt like a total loser until I read Lauren’s essay.
Her courage in sharing the shame she felt for having failed (even though 90% of Y-combinator graduates fail) inspired me. She was successful in all the ways, until she failed. Her failure shouldn’t have been a source of shame. Neither is mine.
It doesn’t matter if you beat the odds and accomplish more than most people. When it doesn’t end well, you are ashamed.
I succeeded until I failed. I built an institutional money management firm from nothing and put up awesome performance numbers until I didn’t.
Lauren’s essay made me realize that I should celebrate everything, because my failure, like hers, wasn’t possible without all of our success.
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