What is entrepreneurial failure?

Many associate entrepreneurial failure with bankruptcy, insolvency, filing for bankruptcy and business failure. It is said that one in four risks not taking off and not making it through the first two years of startup. The survival rate after five years is close to 50% in Quebec. This is the period commonly called the "valley of death".

The situation is even worse for start-ups, some put forward the frightening figure of 80%. It is quite normal that the fear of failure is one of the main obstacles for all those who hesitate to start a business. A proportion of 40 out of 100 entrepreneurs would be stuck in place by the fear of failure and would not develop their brilliant idea.

In fact, there is no real consensus on the meaning of entrepreneurial failure: it can take many forms. It can be a fail-fast , a pivot, one of the many trials and errors in an innovative journey, a lean startup through iterations and market verifications. Failure has its place in an uncertain and fast-paced context, in particular.

Failure can be due to a bad fit, a strategy error, a false good idea, broken promises, a dysfunctional management team, or simply an image that no longer fits the trends. "Every 58 minutes, a product or a company experiences a failure due only to the evolution of the market." All of these ingredients are modifiable: we can rectify the situation if we listen and learn. Failure is a step towards progression, an adjustment.

For every success story, there are a ton of failures lurking in the shadows. Dyson had to try out no fewer than 5,126 prototypes over 15 years before it found success. The entrepreneurial journey is strewn with rocks, it’s made up of dozens of ups and downs; no one said it had to be a straight line.

Leadership of Failure

Failure is conducive to improvement, reflection, post mortems and other lessons learned . We can benefit from it provided we do not bury our heads in the sand and bury our heads in the sand. We must develop a certain " failure leadership " to stop, analyze with lucidity, understand better, do introspection, gain perspective, be aware of the flaws that led to failure, become resilient, develop learning that will be useful later, and then put in place the necessary actions to bounce back differently.

Some prefer not to talk about it. Others celebrate their big binges! You have to know how to succeed in your failures! Transform them into added value. Find the opportunity to become a better leader. There's nothing like a bitter setback to avoid repeating the same mistakes! This is the principle of Fail Camps , which puts failure, once taboo, in the spotlight. De-dramatize the inevitable falls. Share and relieve each other, together: when we compare ourselves, we console ourselves. Even HEC offers one: "Managing risks and encouraging the culture of failure". The CANAM Group has a conference entitled "CANAM's 30 years of failures".

Those who have no ambition do not experience failure, according to one of the organizers of FailCamp. "Nothing beats the satisfaction of surprising yourself," Mitsou shared with one of them. "I'm here to tell you to never stop adjusting. To the market, to your needs, to life." The reputation of several entrepreneurs has even been propelled after the failed adventure. Who has not heard the pangs of Elon Musk's failure, or closer to home, Caroline Néron or Érik Giasson, this former banker, golden boy of Wall Street, who became co-founder of Wanderlust?

Risks, failures and successes

You have to tame the beast, face it, grab the bull by the horns. "A business needs order to survive and disorder to evolve," said Peter Drucker. Failures can happen for the best! Talking about failure is also talking about success. It is celebrating risk-taking. Because entrepreneurship means taking risks.

Of course, the scars of failure can linger for a long time. Some people have no desire to celebrate them. Like Christian Genest, founder of the Sushi Taxi Group and Buddha Station, who carries his bitter failures like "thick scars that constantly remind me of the bad decisions I made." But he admits to having learned a lot along the way, to having risen like never before: a new man, and above all, a new leader.

Nicolas Duvernois, a famous serial entrepreneur and notably the head of Duvernois Creative Spirits, said in a recent interview: "I'm not afraid of failure. Obviously, I prefer to avoid it. But I don't define myself by my successes or my failures: I define myself by the path I take."