[mbesto]

> I remember sitting down with Paul Graham as our startup was failing. I remember how unbelievable difficult it was to get myself to that meeting. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to tell him my startup was failing. It took him 30 seconds to process the failure and then he moved on. He was so unbelievably supportive and so excited for whatever it was I was going to do next.

And this, my friends, is the fundamental difference between SV and the rest of the world. From my knowledge and experience, something like this simply does not happen outside of America. I haven't decided whether this is universally a good or a bad thing, but one thing is for sure - (us) Americans are very tolerant of failure and that is a good thing for startups.

[larrys]

"is the fundamental difference between SV and the rest of the world. From my knowledge and experience, something like this simply does not happen outside of America."

To state the obvious first SV != America.

And outside of SV there really isn't the sense of "failure is quite ok no biggie".

If you are located in a typical place in america and you lose people's money (I'm not talking about startup shot in the dark funny money) you will be viewed as a failure and less likely to get money again.

If you open up a restaurant or a typical small business (with either your own money or friends and family or a bank loan) and you fail you are thought of as a failure. It's really that simple. Most people won't say "ok he learned something let's take another shot".

Key difference is SV (or with any pooled investment fund) is that they understand that what they are investing in is shot in the dark. And besides it's not their money it's primarily their investors money. OPM. And even if it's their money they are betting on many horses a small amount. Not the ranch.

Had PG been working as an engineer at HP at the time and had put a large sum of his personal money into a venture that failed (money that might be needed for his children's college fund) he might have not been so "unbelievably supportive and so excited for whatever it was I was going to do next."

[fludlight]

> Had PG been working as an engineer at HP at the time and had put a large sum of his personal money into a venture that failed (money that might be needed for his children's college fund)

This is why you never invest more than you are willing to lose. If you do, and the venture fails, the blame for your reduced quality of life rest not on the failed founder, but on the imprudent investor.

The nice thing about SV is not just the big pool of investors, but the big pool of prudent investors who don't behave foolishly.

[Ologn]

> This is why you never invest more than you are willing to lose.

Absolutely. It can also skew the decision-making process. People investing more than they can afford to lose are not going to be giving helpful advice or making the right decisions for the business.

[refurb]

I still agree with mbesto's comment. Relative to a lot of places in the world, the US is incredibly tolerant of failure. A French/German friend from school (which was his first time in the US) told me how amazing it was and that you wouldn't see that kind of attitude in Western Europe.

[dkersten]

As a Western Europe counter-example, I recently lived through a startup failure and and our creditors are also being extremely supportive, both in the liquidation process and in our next ventures.

[ballard]

That's savvy b/c it's likely. The team, idea and execution can all be in tune but there's still that darn uncertainty of popularity.

Hope the team's still motivated to carry on; good teams are hard to come by.

(VC's are almost obsolete, unless they have mucho value-add: http://wefunder.com/)

[hnriot]

I think the point that was missed here was that the idea wasn't the investment, investors invest in people. If one idea fails, the person is still capable of other ideas. If the failure was due to poor judgement, then the investor too, made a poor judgement, but there are many reasons why a startup, be it a tech startup or a restaurant might fail that are no "fault" of the management. Also investors are diversified, so while the startup failed, the portfolio as a whole might have still been up, so yet another reason why pg wouldn't get too upset.