The key to success in business is failure

June 6, 2012 - PRLog -- When you prod entrepreneurs about the number of failed businesses they had, most will answer, “Many.” The reason why entrepreneurs are able to do so is that they figured out the key to success is to keep failing.

Everybody wishes that they would hit gold on their first try. Omgpop’s “Draw Something” and Rovio’s “Angry Bird” are a few recent successes that most people have come in contact with or can relate to. One is a guessing game to draw pictures for friends to guess a word and the other is a bird catapult into a tower of pigs. It is simple, easy and fun to use but not at all to create. Both companies suffered multiple loss-making failures that never even appeared on anyone’s radar. Both companies had over 20 failed ventures before stumbling upon or discovering their current winning product.

Other prominent businesses today were not clear-cut runaway success stories when they first began. Henry Ford failed his early businesses and became broke five times before landing on Ford Motor Company. Sony’s first product was a rice cooker that wasn’t able to cook rice, selling less than 100 units. Now Sony is one of the leading electronics multimedia empires. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and started a failed first business with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data. While this early idea didn’t work, his later inventions lead to this post being typed up in Microsoft Word on a Windows platform.

Entrepreneurs also have to face many naysayers and harsh critics.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a  'C', the idea must be feasible." - A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.

"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself." The head of IBM refusing to back the idea that forced the inventor to found Xerox.

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

Despite lacking a single exit from previous six businesses, John Fearon is on the cusp of his big break. Fearon is the CEO and founder of http://Dropmyemail.com, which provides a simple service to back up emails and be able to migrate emails from one provider to another. It’s a free and simple two-click process to sign into Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and all email accounts. Add the mail accounts to back up emails or migrate emails and it is done.

A prominent entrepreneur/investor has even advised Fearon to shut Dropmyemail.com down, because backing up emails is something anyone can replicate. Though, not all businesses are indefensible. Even ideas that appear to be easily replicated, such as daily deals sites, turn out to be difficult to execute. That’s why many group buying sites have come and gone, leaving the trend-starter Groupon in charge.

Now, Dropmyemail.com has accumulated 630,000 registrations and 175,000 monthly scheduled backups within 50 days, faster than Twitter, Pinterest and Fab.com at a similar stage.

Fearon’s grand vision is to eventually back-up the Internet. He hopes to eventually introduce similar tools for backing up calendars, passwords, contacts, social media data, and more. Dropmyemail.com could be the break that he has been seeking.

It is not that anyone should expect to fail in all his or her first attempt at starting a business. Some ideas might just be that great or excellent timing to arrive in the market to hit it big immediately. It is when it doesn’t; true entrepreneurs will not let failure/s stop them from trying again.