Mukund Mohan of Microsoft Ventures has a wow blog post on why illustrated with a couple of examples of startups from the firm's accelerator:
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private company transactions, valuations and financials in India. Click Here to learn about Venture Intelligence products that help entrepreneurs Reach Out to Investors, Research Competition, Learn from Experienced Entrepreneurs and Interact with Peers. Includes the Free Deal Digest Weekly Newsletter: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.For every two of these entrepreneurs, there are 100′s I know whose story did not end up with funding. It ended with a company that closed, or a marriage that fell apart and a kid that had to go to a tier 2 college, because they had spent a lot of their life’s savings in their startup. To them as well, I say “you tried, and did not succeed, but you did not fail”. Those who “failed” are the ones who did not try at all. The ones who failed are the ones in a safe job, 9-5 assignments who keep telling me “they want to start a company some day”.
I think we should have entrepreneurs that succeeded and those that did not succeed. I liken it to giving the gold for the successful ones and silver to the unsuccessful ones. The ones watching on the sidelines and commenting are the ones that “failed”.