Idealog.co.nz | The Transformation Issue
081
opinion
Vaughan is the founder of Vend, a New Zealand
high-growth tech success story, and founder of
OMGTech! a charitable initiative to help kids into
careers with future technology. He was EY's Tech
Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and is vice-chair
of the NZ Hi-Tech Trust, which celebrates the NZ
hi-tech industry through awards and education.how me an overnight success story, and
I will show you a 10-year back story of failure.
The ‘failure’ bit is a vitally important
part of the ‘success’ bit. Without learning
from what we fail at, an overnight success
would never happen – but we don’t talk about the fail part.
The word itself – failure – is supercharged: going all in and
losing everything on a big call. Complete and utter despair
and destruction. Crash and burn, loser.
Or, in a reframed perspective, it can just mean
successfully crossing off another item from your shit-to-try list.
I have had a couple of overnight successes. Vend is a
10-year ‘overnight success’. The Pam Fergusson Charitable
Trust, the charity I launched to help kids learn technology,
is a five-year ‘overnight success’. Both of these ventures
have had multiple stare-into-the-abyss moments. I can
tell you stories that will make you twitch. And from all my
experience, I have learnt that failure is inevitable and being
comfortable with it is when you personally develop the most.
Firstly, you can usually avoid the crash-and-burn of
failure, most definitely survive it, and secondly, who the
fuck cares about anyone who might call you a loser for
trying? Should you take risks and try stuff? Yes. Should
you bet it all? Hell no.
Jeff Bezos, my arch nemesis in retail and producer
of phallic space rockets, looks at decisions and the risks
associated with them as a choice between doors. Most
good decisions are a two-way door, where you can go
through the door and should you find the room is full of
snakes, you can quickly back out of that shit. You nail the
door shut and you don’t open it again. That’s a two-way
door type decision where it is easy to reverse it.
Some decisions, however, are one-way doors: non-
reversible. You step through, the door closes and locks
behind you. You are committed to that course, and if you
get it wrong, you have to deal with some consequences.
I hope you like snakes.
Two-way door decisions should be made quick and
all day long. Some will be wrong, but you quickly spot
the fail and back out and try something different. The
consequences of failing are survivable. On the flipside,
you don’t need to avoid the one-way door decisions as
they often have big rewards. You just need to be sure of
your decision before going through.
I’ve noticed a common pattern when it comes to
making decisions with risk. Often in life, the more time
you have and the more options you have, you have many
two-way doors to explore. But as time goes by, doors close
themselves and finally, when we are forced to make a call,
often the only door left is a one-way door. Instead of failing
fast and going again, we hesitate, perhaps waiting for the
perfect amount of information, or the risk to be zero. We
procrastinate because we are afraid of failing, but end up
with the choice being made for us through a one-way door.
It sounds stupid, but we have all had it happen.
I try and live my life taking a lot of two-way doors.
Have I failed a lot doing it? Oh, fuck yes. I have had some
epic failures. Many ideas that just bombed. But I didn’t
stop starting new things and trying. In fact, I’ve learnt to
embrace the fear of failure. This has famously manifested
itself in me doing an annual impossible challenge. For 10
years, I have picked something that terrified me and then
dared myself to fail at it. I’ve cycled around the world, sang
on stage for money, ran 1000km, built a hundred-million-
dollar venture. I am no Tony Robbins type guy – I am a
below average kid from Pakuranga who was raised by my
mum. She was inspirational, though. She raised us kids as
a solo mum bound to a wheelchair, and nothing in her life
was impossible. She was not afraid to try things and fail.
Most of the everyday things able-bodied people would do
each day were potential failures for mum, from getting out
of bed, to grocery shopping, to driving a car, to camping in
tents in Kauaeranga Valley. She figured, ‘Oh well, I broke
my back, might as well give stuff a go because it sure beats
sitting around being dull’. She was one epic lady.
My mum inspired me to try things and not worry
about failing. Even as a kid, she was always there with some
comforting words as I fell out of a tree or nailed my hand to
a block of wood. I mean, I knew I had screwed up – the pain
was usually a good indicator – but she always managed to
make me feel like I could try it again.
One thing that frustrates me in New Zealand is
our grotesque attitude to failure and its ugly sibling, tall
poppy syndrome. We just love to see others fail, especially
when they are doing well. “Pull your head in, cuz!” It’s
childish, like they want to say, “Nah, nah I told you
so”. It’s depressing to the point of depression for many
entrepreneurs and changemakers in New Zealand. It sucks.
But fuck them, they are the losers here.
Is it cool to fail? No. Should we celebrate failure?
Perhaps not celebrate it, but at least acknowledge the
bravery of giving shit a go. I mean, don’t go doing dumbass
shit and expect a cake and a high-five. But try stuff, and
when you fail, try and make it the two-way door kind of
failure. Sometimes you have no choice and you have to go
through a one-way door, and that’s okay too. Take a deep
breath and go for it. Surround yourself with people who
support you, not try and knock you back.
No one just nails anything important on the first try. Do
you think Serena Williams just nailed it in her first match?
Her first 100? It took her seven years as a professional player
to win her first title, then she was “an overnight success”
who went on to win 23 titles. Another epic lady.
I remember this advice someone once gave me:
when you are feeling like the world is on top of you, just
remember that everyone is fighting their own private
battles. We all hide them well, because we are all terrified
to be seen to fail. You are not the only one experiencing
a quest of imperfection. It’s okay to screw up, and when
we do, make sure we look out for each other. Help pick
someone up and say, “Nice try, I can’t wait to see you try
again.” The more courage we have, then the more options
we have to take those two-way doors. Fuck the naysayers,
the knockers and the snakes. What do they know about
doing epic things, anyway? ■I’ve learnt to embrace
the fear of failure.
This has famously
manifested itself in
me doing an annualimpossible challenge.
For 10 years, I have
picked something
that terrified me and
then dared myself to
fail at it. I’ve cycledaround the world, sang
on stage for money,
ran 1000km, built
a hundred-million-
dollar venture.VAUGHAN FERGUSSON