Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

by Brad Feld

year. Intellectually honest organizations call out which initiatives had little or no progress; great organizations kill the initiatives that were failing and put their energy behind the ones that are working. One easy filter is whether leaders for the individual initiatives emerge on their own. If the leaders of the overall organization have to assign the initiatives, then these initiatives likely are of lower value. However, if participants in the organization or the broader startup community step up and take on the specific initiatives, their chance of succeeding is much higher. More importantly, the fact that individuals are drawn to lead specific initiatives emphasizes the relative importance of the initiatives. Having specific initiatives fail must be an accepted part of the culture of a startup community. As in entrepreneurship, failure is simply part of the process of creating something great, rather than an endpoint. If failure is not acceptable, bad ideas will perpetuate and people who ultimately decide they aren’t going to spend more time on something destined to fail will withdraw from the community. To be successful, embrace failure as part of the process.