One of the traits of successful founders is their ability to turn a loss into a win.
You take a lot of losses as a founder, particularly in the early days. Investors pass on your funding pitches, people pass on your job offers, customers pass on your sales efforts, competitors take your customers and your employees, you get sued, you miss critical ship dates, morale tanks, and on and on and on.
But inside of each of those losing moments is the opportunity to turn it into a win.
You lose out on an important hire and in a pinch you promote a promising person from within and they turn out to be a superstar.
You lose out on a hotly contested sales opportunity and you do a post mortem with the customer and learn that you have a huge hole in your product and you fill it and start wining business.
You whiff on financing effort and so you cut your burn, execute for three more months, and go back and get term sheets from everyone you talk to.
My point is that losses are opportunities to win. You just have to see them as such and find the win in the loss.
This is all about resilience, optimism, and tenacity. The most successful founders have it in spades.
And it can be a learned skill. But you have to get your head in that space to learn it.
