Failure and Execution: The Bet You're Really Making

The Story Nobody Tells

Here’s a brutal truth about business that most people won’t admit: Failure is rarely about the idea. It’s about execution.

Read a startup’s final blog post as they shut down. Listen to what they say, but also to what they don’t say.

Nobody will ever tell you: “We failed because we executed poorly.”

Instead, you’ll get a dissertation. The market wasn’t ready. The investors didn’t understand. The technology was ahead of its time. But never: They simply couldn’t get the job done.

The Implicit Wager

When you look at businesses that have fallen, you’re making an implicit bet. Not just an analysis, but a personal challenge:

“I can execute better than they did.”

That’s the subtext of every entrepreneur’s journey, whether they realize it or not. Not “I have a better idea” — but “I can make this work where others couldn’t.”

The Idea Myth

In an age of ideas, the famous Steve Jobs quote never stops being relevant:

You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.

And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product.

This sums up the difference between most good and bad software, products, movies. When you use a great product or watch a great movie, the level of execution, care, and effort becomes obvious in the first 30 seconds.

Take it from perhaps the greatest product person of all time: It’s all about execution.

The Challenge

So when you consider that next great idea, the only question that matters is: Can you execute? Can you really make it happen?

That’s the only question that matters.

Necessary Disclaimers

1. I’m not speaking about specific businesses, but about general trends. It’s hard to know from the outside what caused a failure, but the general trend is easy to observe.
2. Some businesses involved some really good execution, but the goal was not feasible in the first place. Of course, choosing an appropriate goal is step 1 of execution. There is a deniability to be had in shooting the moon.
3. Some businesses really do fail in spite of great execution. It is pretty difficult to identify this from the outside though.
4. Plenty of businesses succeed in spite of mediocre execution. “A little sleep, a little slumber, and sometimes you win the lottery.”