Overcoming Fear of Failure

2. Overcoming Fear of
Failure - Basics
Sanjay Vijayakumar

3. Principle: You have to fail to
overcome the fear of failure.

4. School tried to teach you how
to succeed and you
automatically developed the
fear of failure

5. At SV.CO, you are learning how to
take a risk and fail and
automatically will learn to overcome
the fear of failure.

6. Fear = Weak
Fail not once, but many times to
develop resistance to fear of
failure.

7. Eg: Like your first pimple at
teenage.

8. Eg: Like 10th standard board exams.

9. We somehow thought that failing is going to affect our future
life for ever.
Not True! Steve Jobs was a very public failure when he was
kicked out of Apple

10. Fact: All entrepreneurs fail!
and then get up again!!

11. We analyse and learn from failures on
“why” we failed so that we
dont make the same mistake twice.

12. Everyone failed when they first tried to balance a
bicycle.
We recalibrated in our brain, made adjustments, and
then we tried again and again till we learned how
to ride the bicycle.

13. When we were children, this fear of failure was
less.
As we grow older, the fear grows along with us
because we think that there is only once chance
to write an exam and if we fail, we will be
considered as someone stupid.

14. Running a business is like
flying a MIG.

15. To learn how to fly a MIG,
you first start training in a
glider.

16. With many hours of practice, you become
an expert in handling a glider and then
start flying a MIG, which is a bigger, faster
and more powerful aircraft.

17. Successful companies, like MIGs, are
build by founders who are experts and
learned the art of flying through hours
of practice.

18. Lesson 1: Use your Self-Awareness to
Reset your expectations from
yourselves and that you have given others
to match with reality.

19. Reality#1: This is your first product and it
will take at-least 3-4 products before
you become an expert at building
products and taking them to customers.

20. Reality#2: This is not your billion dollar
idea. You will 100% fail if you dont get
customers but you still would have
learned valuable skills to get great startup
jobs.

21. Lesson 2: Convert your fear of what other
people think to your advantage by
creating a community of supporters who
can give you critical feedback; for e.g. on
your deck, UI etc.

22. Tip: Start using the Facebook Post
Feature to share real lessons that you
are learning to build this community of
supporters.

23. Tip: Ask people for help to evaluate your
code, evaluate your wire-frames, evaluate
your pitch deck, evaluate your alpha
prototype etc

24. Tip: Instead of a chest-thumping CEO, be
a humble founder which requests for
positive-critisism and feedback that you
can use to improve the product.

25. Lesson 3: SV.CO is your Home.
We are strict on quality but we are also caring
and will help all of you succeed over the next five
years. We know that your intelligence is not fixed.
The more you practise, the better you become
and we will help you get a successful outcome
either as a startup or a great startup job.

26. As an alumni, you are welcome
at home even after the
programme.

27. Summary:
1. Use self-awareness to reset expectations to reality.
Work hard to improve skills in flying your glider (first
idea)
2. Create a community of supporters to overcome fear
of what other people think.
3. SV.CO is Home. You are always loved at home

28. Fail over and over to overcome fear of failure
to become successful through this programme.