Why Schools Must Teach The Art Of Failure | Letter To The Editor | Pune Mirror

Dear Mr. Pankaj Sharma:

Kudos for your brilliant article entitled “Why schools must teach the art of failure” in today’s Pune Mirror.

When it comes to failure in startups, I hear two contradictory narratives.

Narrative 1: Failed startup founders have learned a lot, they should be given priority in their next startup or job. Silicon Valley is the startup capital of the world because it embraces this ethos.

Narrative 2: There are 99 ways to fail and only one way to succeed. There’s no guarantee that a founder who failed once has magically learned that one and only one way to succeed. The next time around, they might just as well fail in the 98 other ways. So, failed founders should not be given priority in their next startup or job.

As an angel investor and in many other areas of my business, I have always been in a quandary about which narrative to accept.

Your article has helped resolve this quandary by pointing out that failure should be treated as an art and advocating that people should be trained to handle and recover from failure instead of the status quo where they’re left to their own devices to stumble out of failures. And school is the ideal place for providing this training.