NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Failure comes with a stigma. When Citizen Effect was failing, I’d enter a room and my ego would notice every person looking at me and I could hear them saying, “That’s Dan Morrison, he’s the one that founded Citizen Effect… and failed” or, “Yeah, how do you get over $1 million from Eric Schmidt, the Knight Foundation and Humana and fail?” Which is a very good question. Why did I fail to turn Citizen Effect into a self-sustaining social enterprise?

The one thing everyone says to a failed entrepreneur is, “learn from your mistakes.” But honestly, every time I heard this, I wanted to punch them in the face. That is because I was working through what I call the five stages of a failed entrepreneur’s grief.