StartupDad: 4 Ways That Entrepreneurship Is Like Hitting a Major League Fastball - Part II

Major league baseball and entrepreneurship.  Two things you don’t usually think of as being comparable. However, working with many first or second time startup founders, and having played baseball in college, I’ve begun to compare entrepreneurial success to hitting a baseball in the major leagues.

In the time it takes a human to blink, .4 seconds, a 95 MPH fastball will travel 60 feet, 6 inches from the pitcher’s mound to home plate.  In the previous post, I wrote about the confidence it takes to hit a 90+ mile an hour fast ball and be a successful entrepreneur.  The second way entrepreneurship is like hitting a major league fastball is:

2. Even when a batter fails, he learns something – Good batters learn something about the pitcher, even when they strike out, that increases their odds of success the next time up to bat.  Entrepreneurs must do the same.  Even in defeat, young entrepreneurs should learn more about product development, customer acquisition, fund raising, team building, and much more, in preparation for their next venture.  Every failure, big and small, is an opportunity to learn.  If you are going to fail, make it count for something and fail forward.

THE TAKEAWAY - Young Entrepreneurs – Never waste a failure.  If you’ve watched much baseball, you’ve likely noticed that as the game goes on, batters get more familiar with pitchers and that most hits come after batters have had an opportunity to see the pitcher throw for an inning or two.  The same is true of entrepreneurship. If you aren’t learning, you aren’t growing.  Failure can be a great teacher.