Failures , road to memorable success

Failures seems a very familiar word to everyone.Everyone might have failed in some way or the other.Different phases of life has different failures associated with it starting from the day a person is born–>becomes a teenager–>person starts working–>gets married and so on…

Leaving the teen age aside(which is more for enjoying rather than taking things too seriously),the age when a person starts working is very important.A person looking out for a new job could be facing failures by not clearing interviews though talent/knowledge is not proportional to clearance in the interview.When a person starts to venture out,difficulties become double but the excitement is also doubled since , it is your own baby

But failing (again and again) leads to de-motivation and you tend to look into yourself “Are you worth it?” but the important thing what we forget is “Trying” which is more than “Failing”.With every failure you see yourself improving(which also depends on the individual whether he wants to improve or not) and the distance between you and your destination becomes lesser and lesser and one day “You are there at your desired destination”

Some of my personal failures(or ares of improvement, which I always remember):

I remember an interview in Datamatics(4 years back) which I cleared only because I could answer one question(which was from the Program Manager of the company) – “Who is Gururaj (Desh) Deshpande?” and my memories became fresh when I read a chapter in “How Innovators connect” which speaks about FAILURES.I would like to share “Gururaj (Desh) Despande’s story along with some of the important points revolving around “Failures and Success” and the lessons we get from them.Let me try to note down some of the interesting findings from the chapter “Connecting with failure“

It is not so much that people like to fail but rather than they see “Failure” as a necessary side trip in the journey to bring great offerings to the market.

“It is very important to break away from your past in order to absorb new ideas.You should be comfortable in saying “I’m going to start something new,I better shut off the past and begin a different chapter in my life” – Umang Gupta,CEO of Keynote Systems

Never lose sight of the past (The Gururaj (Desh) Deshpande story):

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is the chairman of Sycamore Networks and he is on the board of directors of many IT companies.But he was not successful like this before.He has a pay cheque of $26.95 framed in his office.This cheque helps him to remember how someone can overcome failure with success.As Deshpande says: “Failures broaden your comfort zone and allow you to view risk a little differently”

He co-founded network hardware company Coral Network Corp in 1988 and “boot-strapped” th company while trying to raise $4 million in VC funding.When funding came in , it was a dream come true for him and his wife.His wife who was in IT also quit her job to take care of their two young children.
But soon,there was an ugly misunderstanding between him and his co-founder and they parted ways.When Coral Networks was sold to Synoptics,$26.95 was all that Mr Deshpande earned from the sale.

But Coral’s experience strengthened Deshpande’s belief that it is important to find things that excite you and do things you want to do and you should not be afraid of making a living.In India,culturally, people don’t want to accept failure because if you fail,you are marked for life.The irony he says is more you can deal with failure,the faster you can bounce back,whether you are an individual, a company or even a national economy.

After a (so called) failure,Deshpande was out with his new venture Cascade Communications Corp.Cascade became a huge success and very soon grew to $500 million in revenues.In 1997,Ascend Communications acquired Cascade for $3.7 billion.

From his early days,Deshpande learnt a lot: “To get things started , you have to be slightly crazy ,since if you are too thoughtful and too analytical , you would probably never pull the trigger“.These things are not so different from the critical decisions that we take in personal life like when to get married,having children or buying a house etc

Once Cascade was sold,Gururaj Deshpande went on to start his new venture Sycamore Networks.This time around he was able to finance himself and raising money for this venture took him only 15 seconds Today,along with his work with Sycamore,Deshpande also acts as a VC and is an investor in many startups in India and the US.

This is just a small story of a successful Entrepreneur who was hit by failures and bounced back well.Every Entrepreneur(or should I say person) is hit by failures but it all depends on how you come back after failure.

If you have reached so long in this post,I really appreciate it but you would ask this question “Why only Gururaj Deshpande? The reason is a. I cleared the Datamatics Interview (4 years back) but I did not join there and b. I keep his photograph on my desk in the office since,I really appreciate his effort.

Finally before I end this article,last words of success: “The successful innovators don’t let failure stop their internal quest to succeed“

You can also check out “The Steve Jobs Story about failures and success” here , which is really very motivating and also also teaches you many lessons in just 14 minutes