We spent the whole Tuesday in a conference called Failcon in San Francisco. The conference focused on the trials and tribulations of successful entrepreneurs. The speakers included the founders of some of the leading social web and VC firms in the bay area such as for example Sandy Jen and Seth Sternberg; co-founders of Meebo and Mark Pincus; CEO of Zynga just to name a few. We heard different kinds of stories about failure and how to recover from it. One message got repeated over and over again: don’t be afraid of failing! For each of these succesfull entrepreneurs failure had worked as a catalyst for future success. They had learned their greatest lessons from their failures. We got to hear some truly inspirational speeches! Here are some other wise words we heard on some specific topics:

Team

- Have different set of skills in your team.
- Distribute areas of responsibility.
- Hire people with entrepreneurial mindset.
- Handle recruiting in-house.

Development

- Use iteration in development.
- Always assume that you’re wrong.
- Test everything.
- Lauch fast, launch imperfect.
- Do one thing at a time.

VCs

- Best deal might not be the one with the highest valuation.
- Negotiate for the control of the company.
- Control your roadmap.
- Have a flexible business plan.

Last but not least you need to know when to quit. When you start feeling like a walking zombie it’s time. Misery is the natures way of saying you are doing it wrong.

Filed under: Silicon Valley trip by Kimmo