Seeqnce is hosting its first session of the Naked Startup Series presentations, featuring cuevox.com and its founder Mackram Raydan. Since the theme of the series is about openly acknowledging the inevitable setbacks that entrepreneurs face, Seeqnce’s Editor In Chief writes below about the fear of failure. Stay tuned for an interview with Mackram Raydan himself!

“If you’re not jumping on each and every opportunity you can face, you’ll never know your real boundaries” – Dragos Roua

“I am too young…”, “I am too inexperienced…”, “I don’t know how many people will buy the product…”, “I don’t know if this is a good idea at all…”, “I am an IT guy, I don’t know anything about business…”, “What if I FAIL…?” All these thoughts are reflections of a fear of failure. And that’s ok, because it’s fear of unknown, fear of uncertainty. What is not ok is feeding that fear and keeping it inside you instead of overcoming it or learning to live with it. So if you are an entrepreneur, especially a newbie, then the fear of failure is most likely something that you cannot avoid. But of course you can do something about it and let’s see a few tips on that.

1. Recognize the benefits of failure: Changing your attitude towards failure is the first thing you need to do. “In business, like in life, there are valuable lessons to be learned in each failure. Even if a failure costs you short-term financial hardship or embarrassment, the educational benefits can outweigh the loss” writes Nellie Akalp for Business Insider.  Failing doesn’t make you a loser. To the contrary, if you learn out of it, it’s the first step towards making you a winner. Moreover, in his great blog post,“Why to Not Not Start a Startup”, Paul Graham says: “Managers at big companies prefer to hire someone who’d tried to start a startup and failed over someone who’d spent the same time working at a big company. Maybe that experience at a big company isn’t as safe or as valuable as you think?”

2. Go with something you know: Harshit Sekhon, a business analyst, suggests that going with something you are expert in, is a great strategy to reduce your fear of failure. Your domain expertise will increase your self confidence and furthermore it might increase your chances of understanding your market better. He says: “If you’ve been a tech-head, go with a tech solution. That’s one less thing to learn”.

3. Put your worst scenario in perspective: Thinking about the worst that may happen is a good idea to reduce your fear of failure, because in the end you might realize that the worst scenario is not as bad as you thought. Tim Ferriss in the 4-Hour Workweek says: “If you chase your dreams and fall flat on your face, worst-case scenario, how long will it take you to recover?” So is it that bad if your startup fails? How hard will it be to start a new startup or find a new job? The answer is that most probably you will recover in a few months. Moreover as Akalp advises: “You can also make the necessary preparations to minimize the downside of failure. For example, you can structure your new business in such a way to minimize your personal liability. You can build up your emergency fund. No matter your personal situation, you should always manage risk intelligently ⎯ embracing failure doesn’t necessarily mean you should risk losing it all”.

4. Dive in (it’ll be ok) – take action, otherwise you failed. Jumping and taking action is a great way to overcome fear of failure because once you jump you begin to accumulate knowledge and experience. PickTheBrain.com writes: “Everything is hardest the first time. It’s like jumping off a cliff into a lake — after you do it once, you see that the water is safe and each time afterwards is easy. Start off with small steps and build up your confidence until the fear of failure is manageable”. Thus, you cannot make it if you don’t try it. Akalp advises to maybe sign up for a small business seminar, or register your dream URL, sign up for a craft fair or startup meeting, or any other action that will force yourself into action. That is how you will build confidence and gain momentum.

5. Remember that great entrepreneurs failed many times before they made it big:  When you are afraid that your startup will have an epic fail, think of many great people and companies that failed before they made it big. However, keep in mind that what made them successful despite their failures was their great ability to learn. They failed often, but they learned often too.

Steve Jobs is a great example. He revolutionized the computer and multimedia industry with his marvelous inventions and success stories, but he is also an entrepreneur who had a lot of epic fails. Do you remember Apple I and Apple II computers? They were sold in mere hundreds and were complete failures. What about Lisa, introduced in the early 1980s? What about NeXT Computer? Do you relate these failures to Steve Jobs? – Not sure… Well yes, he failed on these ones but all of them were followed by great successes. Check Nick Shulz’ great blog post, “Steve Jobs: America’s Greatest Failure”, to read more about this.

What aboutGoogle? Even great companies such as Google have startup failures. Google Wave, Google Nexus One, Jaiku, or Google Answers are some examples of startup projects which required huge investments and in the end they still failed. Follow this andthis link to read more about Google startup failures. Thus, we can see that failing is part of the learning process and part of your way to success.

To sum up, failing is not such a bad thing. In fact it is a great thing because it teaches you to things you cannot learn without “hitting the ground”. Fred Wilson says: “When we meet with entrepreneurs, I’m always interested in their failures. And most people have them, you just have to dig a bit to find them. If someone has failed and taken the time to learn from it, I think that’s a big positive. It makes us even more excited to back them the next time. Don’t hide your failures. Wear them as a badge of honor. And most of all, learn from them”.

Most people underestimate their merit and ability to recover from failure, leading them to pass up valuable opportunities. The ability to fail big and fail often has been a mark of the spectacularly successful throughout history – PickTheBrain.com