A rather lively discussion raised one of crucial for contemporary Russia issues of how the society should treat failure of startuppers. As it was said at the seminar, at certain stages of business development failures are quite often due to various reasons.
But as a rule, those entrepreneurs who are going through them, often understand that they only contribute to the strengthening of overcoming startup. At the same time, society itself in Russia, as well as in most Asian and European economies, is adversely about failures, bankruptcies are pursued legally and create moral rejection.
This attitude complicates lives, not only for those who are trying through failure to create their own business, it also pushes away potential startuppers, who are just thinking to start a business - as the fear of failure is too great.
Mohsen Moazami, vice president of Cisco Systems in charge of developing markets, said that tolerance to failures is one of the cornerstones of ecosystem of the Californian Silicon Valley. Such an approach should be and in Russia too. “Key ingredient is celebrating and favoring failure. I have a friend here, in this hall, who was pioneering in handwriting technology for mobile phones and had a $40 million investment from venture capital companies and a very loud, front page failure. He was doing this technology, which all of us have now and he failed. But the Silicon Valley trusts him, honors him and gives him a second chance,” the Cisco System vice-president said.
Peter Vestrbacka, marketing director of the Finnish company Rovio, which has conquered the world with its computer game Angry Birds, said that the Rovio, before it hit the mark with their super successful game, has created 55 other games that were not as noticeable on the market. "To take the defeat and not be afraid to try new activities," Vestrbacka appealed. He said that a group of Finnish student entrepreneurs even created a “National Failure Day”, when they invited successful entrepreneurs to talk about their failure. “The thing is that you learn so much more from failure than from success,” Rovio’s marketing director said.
Viktor Vekselberg said that in his business practice there was first a long period of sustained growth without significant failures. "Initially, you're most focused, do not take additional risks in partnerships, analyzing risks associated with investment capital, to analyzing environment," - said Vekselberg. "But as soon as your business reaches a certain level you start to relax, part of your portfolio (according to Pareto Logic Rules) is a risky part," he said. And in this period you start delegating responsibilities and authority, as Viktor Vekselberg said. The president of the Foundation also said that the greatest success for a startup is measured by how successful was creation of the team. "If we're talking about business, especially venture capital, the main thing, is that they are about people, human relationships, ability to create around yourself a team of associates, which at 150 percent of all thinks like you,” Viktor Vekselberg said. As he said, creation of a team and identifying its goal is most important to the growth stage,” Viktor Vekselberg said. According to him, if success is due to the implementation of specific technological ideas, underlying business, then 30% (of successful startups) is a great result. "Skolkovo should be the environment in which we measure our success not only and not based on concrete achievements in specific projects, but by entrepreneurial culture in the innovation field, Viktor Vekselberg said.