As Chris Dixon pointed out the folks behind Angry Birds, a company named Rovio, was around for eight years and had developed 52 games before finally making it big. They almost went bankrupt a few years ago. I heard somewhere that their expected 2012 revenues will be around $400 million.

As Chris said:

You tend to hear about startups when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a systematically distorted perception that companies succeed overnight. Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every “overnight success” is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them.

In other words, we fail until we don’t.

It strikes me that this is the case in almost all walks of life. I’m watching my eldest daughter learn to read. She has been learning for almost two years now, starting somewhere in her third year. She failed at it until now.

Failure isn’t the end, and that is what I like about calling it failure. Failure is a good reason to try again.

Just like with my daughter. She didn’t get discouraged. She just kept trying.