Founders at FAIL with the GoCrossCampus Team

Ever wanted to hear the stories of a startup gone wrong? You’re in luck. I’ll be speaking at the inaugural Founders at FAIL, a new lecture series hosted by Schuyler Brown of DFJ Gotham, along with my former GoCrossCampus co-founder Matthew Brimer. I encouraged Schuyler to make this happen, as I love the concept — candid discussions of businesses that didn’t make it and the reasons behind their failure.

I’ve long believed that failure is replicable, while success always contains an element of luck. That is, the reasons why companies fail are often repeated across the spectrum of startups, and taking a deep dive into the causes of failure can be incredibly helpful to entrepreneurs at any stage. The lessons of failure often drill down to the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship — relationships with team members, technology and marketing decisions, hiring and other core elements that can get lost in blow-the-doors-off success stories, but are utterly critical to giving yourself the best shot at creating a great company.

Matt and I are in the position of having a fairly amicable end to our venture, so it’s not too difficult to talk about. According to the event description, Matt and I will be talking about “[our] experience running a kickass business into the ground”. Should be fun.

If you’re interested,  check out the event here.