Overcoming Fear of Failure - Basics

Sanjay Vijayakumar

Principle: You have to fail to overcome the fear of failure.

School tried to teach you how to succeed and you automatically

developed the fear of failure

At SV.CO, you are learning how to take a risk and fail and automatically will learn to overcome the fear of failure.

Fear = WeakFail not once, but many times to

develop resistance to fear of failure.

Eg: Like your first pimple at teenage.

Eg: Like 10th standard board exams.

We somehow thought that failing is going to affect our future life for ever.

Not True! Steve Jobs was a very public failure when he was kicked out of Apple

Fact: All entrepreneurs fail! and then get up again!!

We analyse and learn from failures on “why” we failed so that we

dont make the same mistake twice.

Everyone failed when they first tried to balance a bicycle.

We recalibrated in our brain, made adjustments, and then we tried again and again till we learned how to ride the

bicycle.

When we were children, this fear of failure was less. As we grow older, the fear grows along with us

because we think that there is only once chance to write an exam and if we fail, we will be considered

as someone stupid.

Running a business is like flying a MIG.

To learn how to fly a MIG, you first start training in a glider.

With many hours of practice, you become an expert in handling a glider and then start flying a MIG, which is a bigger, faster and

more powerful aircraft.

Successful companies, like MIGs, are build by founders who are experts and learned

the art of flying through hours of practice.

Lesson 1: Use your Self-Awareness to Reset your expectations from yourselves and that you have given others to match with reality.

Reality#1: This is your first product and it will take at-least 3-4 products before you

become an expert at building products and taking them to customers.

Reality#2: This is not your billion dollar idea. You will 100% fail if you dont get

customers but you still would have learned valuable skills to get great startup jobs.

Lesson 2: Convert your fear of what other people think to your advantage by creating a community of supporters who can give you critical feedback; for e.g. on your deck, UI etc.

Tip: Start using the Facebook Post Feature to share real lessons that you are learning

to build this community of supporters.

Tip: Ask people for help to evaluate your code, evaluate your wire-frames, evaluate

your pitch deck, evaluate your alpha prototype etc

Tip: Instead of a chest-thumping CEO, be a humble founder which requests for

positive-critisism and feedback that you can use to improve the product.

Lesson 3: SV.CO is your Home. We are strict on quality but we are also caring and

will help all of you succeed over the next five years. We know that your intelligence is not fixed.

The more you practise, the better you become and we will help you get a successful outcome either as a

startup or a great startup job.

As an alumni, you are welcome at home even after the programme.

Summary:1. Use self-awareness to reset expectations to reality.

Work hard to improve skills in flying your glider (first idea)2. Create a community of supporters to overcome fear of

what other people think.3. SV.CO is Home. You are always loved at home

Fail over and over to overcome fear of failureto become successful through this programme.