I woke up to a dream this morning where I was playing a game that was very similar to Turntable.fm, a failed effort to create a social music experience that had a moment back in 2011 and that I had invested in via USV. In the dream, someone had created a new version of the game that was basically identical to the original version. It was as fun to play it as it was to play Turntable back in the day. Then I found out that the creators of this new game had received venture capital funding and were going to turn it into a business. I met the founders and was happy for them. Then I woke up.
Investments that don’t work haunt me. It isn’t the losing money part. I have learned to live with that. It comes with the territory in VC. It’s the losing part that haunts me. The what could have been part. The “if only we had done it differently” part.
Good ideas will eventually be executed successfully. And investments that don’t work are often failures of execution. So it makes sense that someone could come along and make your idea work after you failed with it. It happens regularly in the startup world. And it can be painful to watch.
I’ve gone through a few periods of burnout in my career and it was usually brought on by a string of painful failures. I’ve watched others navigate that similarly. If you are heavily invested in something that doesn’t work, it hurts. And the more the investment is of yourself, your time, your enthusiasm, the worse it is.
I’ve gotten out of these periods of burnout by turning my attention to something else. Crypto was helpful for me back in 2013 and 2014 when I was going through one of those periods. It was something new that I could throw myself at, that was different, and that was working.
It’s that old adage about getting back on the horse that tossed you. I am not a horse rider, but I get the adage and agree with it. The best salve for failure is success. And you have to keep going to get there.
