F**king up, but learning from it.
I recently started running Fuckup Nights in Berlin. Here’s why:
I’ve never been shy about sharing my experience of failing with my startup. To date I have given two talks about it here in Berlin and I have discussed it with dozens of my peers. It helps that the story is somewhat… compelling… featuring a trip to the High Court in Leeds, an article in The Sunday Times, and a certain, infamous, “sweary” t-shirt.
I don’t believe there is any shame in failure — on the contrary, I am still immensely proud of what I achieved together with my then co-founder and the excellent little team we built. As you can probably imagine, I keep a fairly close eye on the business under its new owners, and it seems to be doing pretty well, winning prizes here and there.
Of course failures alone are just failures, but failures combined with analysis can make extremely valuable learnings — both for one’s self, and for others. If there is one thing I am determined to do, it is to try to prevent others from making the same mistakes I made — and there were quite a few!
That why when I heard about Fuckup Nights, I was keen to share my story with them. Fuckup Nights is a global movement, with events run in over 300 cities worldwide, and it turns out the fella that was running it in Berlin wanted to hand over the reigns… so I stepped up and took over.
Usually the events are held “in real life”, but of course due to the pandemic lockdown they had shifted online. I’d participated in a couple of the online events, and really enjoyed hearing the fuckup stories and was looking forward to putting on the first Berlin “Quarantine edition” event in October.
The format is simple: 3 speakers give 7-minute talks about their failure and what they learned. Important: that it doesn’t become a humble-brag. It’s about real failure and real learnings.
First challenge — find two more speakers for the inaugural event. I had two great speakers in mind already — Will Bell, the Berlin-based founder of barber-booking software SaaS, Nearcut, and Arvid Kahl, whom I follow on Twitter, and had a very interesting journey building and selling his startup, Feedback Panda.
Of course, I didn’t want Will and Arvid to tell us about their successes — I wanted to hear about their failures. I needn’t have worried, as anyone that tells you they have never had any failures on their way to success is probably lying.
Arvid shared with us the story of one of his previous startups that built a two-sides marketplace building, without testing the demand on either side. Will shared a more recent experience where he failed to trust his gut when it came to a potentially problematic employee, who turned out to be a bit more than just a minor problem.
My personal challenge, was to get my own talk, which previously took >1h to share, down to 7 minutes. Turns out if I don’t waffle (and keep out a few of the more minor fuckup parts) I can manage it!
If you want to hear these stories, please see the recording of the Livestream on Facebook. If you use Facebook, and want to keep up with future events in Berlin please Like the Fuckup Nights Berlin page.
I hope to put on about 4–6 events a year. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future we will be able to hold the events in person again. The next Quarantine Edition should be in December, or more likely January. If you want to be notified when the next Berlin event is on, or you have your own fuckup to share, please get in touch via the Fuckup Nights Berlin page.
I look forward to hearing and learning from more fuckups in Berlin! Onwards to success!
