All too often, we find ourselves unconsciously following along with what everyone else is saying and doing. Don’t worry—that’s just part of being human. But does it really ever get us anywhere? Success takes discernment, critical thinking, and independent formation of ideas—and absolute fearlessness about failure. You can decide for yourself when ideas are truly serving you and society as a whole…and when they’re just keeping everyone down.
Failure is one of life’s toughest lessons that everyone must endure. It’s a fact of life. You will fail sooner or later, even if you are the brightest, strongest, smartest, most charismatic person on earth. You will fail at something; there is no way around that. You can’t be the best at everything—not from the start, and surely not forever. That’s the harsh truth of life.
Humans fear the unknown. Our natural response is to reject change or anything new. Perhaps this is a defense mechanism to protect what we have, or what we know. When you look at the people who changed the world with products, ideologies, and even religion, and read about their struggles, you will find that they all have one thing in common: they all failed at something at least once.
When it comes to business, in this part of the world, failure is closer to social suicide than bankruptcy. Startups fail all the time in Silicon Valley and in Europe. A VC once told me in my twenties, “If you don’t have failures in your record, big failures that everyone knew about, you will have trouble raising money at your age.” I was 27.
Failing at a business in the MENA region is inevitable, as in any other region; however, that’s a cloud that will hang over an entrepreneur’s head for quite a while, sometimes forever. Gossip, sadly, is part of the culture. We love discussing people, and although I hate it, I sometimes find myself doing it unintentionally. We long for drama, and failure in business is the kind of drama people pay attention to—for all the wrong reasons.
TO LOOK AT FUNDING AS THE MAJOR REASON STARTUPS FAIL IN THIS PART OF THE WORLD WOULD BE WRONG.
In the west, a quick failure, especially in a venture or a startup, is celebrated. They look at it as a fast, harsh lesson, and encourage you to dust yourself off and move on to the next venture. Here, however, an entrepreneur would rather live in denial for years, and keep everything looking sound in hopes of a miracle; though you would find, in most cases, that the entrepreneur knew six months in that his/her startup was bound to fail. They keep these zombie startups alive instead of mercy-killing them, just to protect themselves from society. You can’t blame them, though; they fear that if someone heard of their failure, they wouldn’t support or fund their next venture, because it would reflect badly on their record as an entrepreneur.
It is known globally that most startups fail because of lack of funding. I don’t see that this necessarily applies to this part of the world, however. You might think I’ve gone crazy right about now, but let me explain. The startups in the region still need more funding. I fully support that, and I am vocal about it anytime and everywhere I can be. However, we lack innovation and original ideas that can truly impact how people live their lives.
The age of cloning ideas validated in the west is over. The world is becoming smaller by the minute, and technology adaptation is higher now than it has ever been. Most startups from Silicon Valley launching now have global domination in their minds from day one, and reach every continent in less than two years, whereas before, it took them at least five. Language is no longer that big of a barrier, and Internet speeds are increasing year by year due to telecom wars and their increased reliance on selling data plans.
To look at funding as the major reason startups fail in this part of the world would be wrong. Why, you ask? Because we have well-funded startups that have come out of the MENA region, but they were clones of well-funded unicorn startups in Silicon Valley. This proves that funding is not the issue; investors in this part of the world would rather place their bet on a validated clone than an innovative startup that might or might not disrupt an industry. This deserves an article all its own.
DON’T JUST CLONE TO FEEL SAFE. DON’T FEAR FAILURE, OR CARE WHAT SOCIETY THINKS OF YOU. YOUR PEERS WILL UNDERSTAND AND RESPECT YOU IF YOU FAIL, AND AFTER A WHILE, EVERYONE ELSE WILL, TOO.
It’s simple. Lessons need to be learned, and you will not learn unless you fail. We learned this as kids, when we started walking or riding a bike: we had to fall first. The more vocal you are about your failures, the less people will care about them—that’s a fact. The knowledge you share with people about your failures will help the community, so others won’t fall into the same mistakes you once made. This will better the ecosystem as a whole.
I have personally failed many more times than I’d like. Failure has a bitter, long-lasting taste that stays with you until you succeed. The only reason you push yourself harder in your next venture is because you’ve learned that this taste will only go away once you do. I urge every entrepreneur to challenge themselves, and to try to solve a problem, in any industry, in an innovative way.
Don’t just clone to feel safe. Don’t fear failure, or care what society thinks of you. Your peers will understand and respect you if you fail, and after a while, everyone else will, too. At least if you fail at trying something new, you will lay the groundwork and inspire someone else. All you have to do is your research—and then try again. Don’t give up simply because you once failed; then you won’t be worthy of calling yourself an entrepreneur. The only way to break a taboo forever is to change how we feel about it first. Only then will society understand that it’s okay to fail. You change society by example, not by your opinion.
