Hi everyone!
It has taken some time to update the blog. Keeping busy with Mendor - more news and updates to follow. In the meanwhile, something that I originally wrote for another purpose.
My personal failure experience (originally written in October 2011 for the National Fail Day of Finland -initiative (http://epaonnistumisenpaiva.fi/))
I was recently approached by friends from Aalto University Entrepreneurship Society, who had a great idea in mind. They were describing an initiative of starting a national tradition of a yearly National Fail Day. They wanted me to join and give my support to the initiative by writing something from my own experience (yes, I've managed to fail a couple of times).
Well, the idea struck me immediately and I definitely wanted to participate and write something "embarrassing" about myself! :)
All this in mind, I started drafting my text, and here it is, my personal failure experience.
It was the fall of 2010 and I had been working at
Mendor (my current company) from 2006 to develop a next generation blood glucose meter and a new kind of online software application for better management of daily diabetes treatment. We originally founded the company with some old friends from university etc. and had begun our journey from
Venture Cup competition already back in 2004. So we had been several years in the research and development phase, and also building a pretty extensive supplier network to be able to some day manufacture and deliver the meter to our customers. In the summer of 2010 we had finally received the
CE-mark and EU region sales permit. We were very happy about this and were now finally getting closer to actually being able to start selling the products.
Along the way we had received a lot of funding from Finnish Foundation for Inventions (Keksintösäätiö), TEKES, Finnvera Venture Capital (ex Veraventure), angel investors etc. but now we were really running thin.... for some reason, in the midst of all the overwhelming workload, we had managed to get too close to being out of cash. Of course we had been continuously looking for VC-money but it just hadn't worked out just the way we had planned. VC-money is never easy.... and takes more time than you would think....
I have a very lively memory of one board meeting in around October 2010, where we realized that we might need to file for bankruptcy. That meeting really stopped me..... right there, we were very close to going under.... We had been in this situation before already once but it wasn't at all this close. This time it was! Despite the risk of all liabilities etc. we decided to still continue for two weeks or so and the board appointed me to start running the fund raising immediately.
The following week was probably one of the toughest times in my life. I was really nervous all the time and worked like frantic. I even had some sleeping problems (normally never happens to me). Luckily, after a load of emails, phone calls, investor meetings etc, we managed to find more investors and also convinced the existing investors to invest still a bit more to keep us going.
After all that I clearly realized, that I had let myself be in a false mode of not really taking the responsibility of the company's financial situation and fundraising activities. Even though I was a co-founder and a board member. I had really failed in my duties and also neglected my responsibilities. Why did I let it get this far before really taking the responsibility on my own behalf? Why had I been caught in my dreams and not really been awake to see the reality?
Well, I definitely learned my lesson there, and luckily we didn't go under, at least not at that time..... :)
After that I've continued failing a lot ...and getting better and better, but not only in failing.
It never stops, and it shouldn't!!