Anticipate Failure: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Navigating Uncertainty, Avoiding Disaster, and Building a Successful Business

by Lak Ananth

Quibi was going to put short, premium-quality videos in the hands of millions of content-hungry mobile consumers around the globe. The Apple Newton combined cool with indispensable in a way that was expected to spark a new mobile device market that was much bigger than the personal computing market. The $2,500 Tata Nano automobile was touted as a major gamechanger for India and the millions of aspiring middle-class customers who would surely buy one. The Segway personal transporter was introduced with fanfare as a marvel of technology that was poised to change urban transportation. Each one of these products was to set the world on fire—disrupting markets and changing our lives forever. Until they didn’t. In his groundbreaking book, Anticipate Failure , Lak Ananth—CEO of global venture capital firm Next47—describes the most common patterns of failure in innovation. He starts with the premise that building a business based on innovation is a perilous endeavor, and failures big and small are always around the corner. Ananth then dives into instances of failures, guiding the reader to understand root causes. Finally, he provides readers with insights and coaching that will enable them not just to avoid failure, but to anticipate it and then get through it on the way to success. Anticipate Failure contains a riveting mix of stories of high-profile failures in innovation as well as many new stories that will be found nowhere else. In addition, Ananth has interviewed some of today’s most successful founders and executives for the book, including Filip Kaliszan, CEO of Verkada; Gokul Rajaram, on the DoorDash executive team, Dr. Roland Busch, CEO of Siemens; James Joaquin, Managing Director of Obvious Ventures, Eran Ben-Shushan, CEO of Bizzabo; Andre Hartung, President of Diagnostic Imaging at Siemens Healthineers; Li Pu, President of Segway Robotics; and many others. Anticipate Failure is not a “do-these-things-and-you-will-succeed” prescriptive kind of business book. Instead, it is a coach and trusted companion that will help any business founder, executive, and manager get through some of the most difficult challenges they will face when they embark on innovation and building a new business. Read it, then put the lessons you learn to work in your own business.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

185 pages, Hardcover

Published December 7, 2021

Reviews

[Mr Shahabi · Rating 2 out of 5]

No for me.

[Kurt Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth a skim, some useful nuggets

First, I didn’t like the title of the book. No one wants to anticipate failure. The concept of understanding the common ways a startup can fail are appreciated but I really don’t like that negativity. It’s bad marketing.

Next, Lak does a very thorough job with anecdotes about the common ways startups or companies fail/make mistakes. He interviews lots of people from all types of companies. But it gets a bit exhausting and long winded. He also mixed startup advice and big company. I think this isn’t wise.

His points are buried. He makes some good points buried in the text. He needs to lead upfront with the points he wants to make and summarize them at the end.

He had a few good nuggets in there around the team and execution. You can probably just read the bolded parts of each chapter and decide if that’s an area you’d like to review.

His best writing was at the very end “Before you Go” it flowed sup well and I got an idea who he was. He should write a book called the Circle of Startups with the concept of his Circle of Life.