Failure

No one sets out to start their day — much less their business — with a failure.

When we started reporting for this issue, we knew that well. But we were somewhat surprised at business owners' reluctance to share what they've learned when things went wrong. They cringed at our requests to recount their worst moments, even after we explained we were more interested in how the experience made them better in the end.

In Silicon Valley, failure has become something to embrace. “Fail fast” is a saying often uttered by tech company CEOs — so they can get the pain over with and move on to the learning part as quickly as possible. They believe these setbacks are essential, and inevitable, for their business.