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Showing posts with label Failure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Failure. Show all posts

Thursday 11 January 2024

First US private lunar lander mission fails

The spacecraft carrying the Peregrine, a commercially built American lunar lander, may be facing a critical failure after its launch Monday. Derrick Pitts, the chief astronomer at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, joins CBS News with details on the spacecraft's apparent fuel leak.

Damaged Peregrine moon lander beams back photo, time running out on power

An historic commercial US mission to the Moon will fail after suffering a critical loss of fuel, organizers admitted Tuesday, ending for the time being America's hopes of placing its first spacecraft on the lunar surface since the Apollo era.

Astrobotic began reporting technical malfunctions, starting with an inability to orient Peregrine's top-mounted solar panel towards the Sun © - / Astrobotic/AFP

Fixed to the top of United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic's Peregrine Lunar Lander blasted off Monday from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, then successfully separated from its launch vehicle.

But a few hours later, Astrobotic began reporting malfunctions, starting with an inability to orient Peregrine's solar panel towards the Sun and keep its battery topped up, owing to a propulsion glitch that also damaged the spacecraft's exterior.

The company said it had "no chance of soft landing" on the Moon.

Peregrine has about 40 hours of fuel remaining and Astrobotic said it planned to operate the spacecraft until it ran out of propellant.

NASA had paid the company more than $100 million to ship scientific hardware to a mid-latitude region of the Moon to answer questions about the surface composition and radiation in the surrounding environment, as it prepares to send astronauts back to Earth's nearest neighbor later this decade.

The United States is turning to the commercial sector to stimulate a broader lunar economy and cut costs, but Astrobotic's failure could increase scrutiny about the strategy.

Astrobotic however said it was continuing to receive valuable data to prepare for its next contracted mission, sending the Griffin lander transporting a NASA rover to the lunar south pole, later this year.

Latest commercial failure

It is the latest private company to have tried and failed to achieve a soft lunar landing.

Israel's Beresheet lander, the first attempt by a non-government entity, was destroyed on impact with the Moon in April 2019, while Japan's private Hakuto mission, operated by iSpace, crashed in April 2023.

For now, the feat has only been accomplished by a handful of national space agencies: the Soviet Union was first, in 1966, followed by the United States, which is still the only country to put people on the Moon.

China has successfully landed three times since 2013, while India was the most recent to achieve the feat on its second attempt, last year.

The next commercial attempt will be by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which is launching in February, bound for the Moon's south pole.

In addition to its scientific instruments, Peregrine is carrying more colorful cargo on behalf of its own private clients. These include a physical Bitcoin and cremated remains and DNA, including those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, legendary sci-fi author and scientist Arthur C. Clarke and a dog.

The Navajo Nation, America's largest Indigenous tribe, had objected to sending human remains, calling it a desecration of a sacred space. Though they were granted a last-ditch meeting with White House and NASA officials, but their misgivings failed to change matters.

2024 AFP

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Tuesday 19 May 2015

Big homegrown successes in India from Sillicon Valley's returning 'fail fast' engineers

Taking failure as a norm would be a major cultural shift in India, where high-achieving children are expected to take steady jobs at recognised job

India learns to 'fail fast' with startups

Families that expect children to have respectable jobs may be beginning to accept failure as the tech industry starts to come of age.

After ping pong tables, motivational posters and casual dress codes, India’s tech startups are following Silicon Valley’s lead and embracing the “fail fast” culture credited with fuelling creativity and success in the United States.

Taking failure as a norm is a major cultural shift in India, where high-achieving children are typically expected to take steady jobs at recognised firms. A failed venture hurts family status and even marriage prospects.

But that nascent acceptance, fuelled by returning engineers and billions of dollars in venture fund investment, is for many observers a sign that India’s US$150bil tech industry is coming of age, moving from a back-office powerhouse to a creative force.

“There is obviously increased acceptance,” said Raghunandan G, co-founder of TaxiForSure, which was sold to rival Ola this year. He is now investing in other early stage ventures.

“My co-founder Aprameya (Radhakrishna) used to have lines of prospective brides to meet ... the moment we started our own company, all those prospective alliances disappeared. No one wanted their daughters to marry a startup guy.”

Srikanth Chunduri returned to India after studying at Duke University in the US, and is now working on his second venture. “I think what’s encouraging is that acceptance of failure is increasing despite the very deep-rooted Asian culture where failure is a big no,” he said.

IT’S OK TO FAIL

The shift has come about, executives say, as engineers began returning from Silicon Valley to cash in on India’s own boom, as hundreds of millions of Indians go online.

“Investors too want to find the next Flipkart, and most of them come from Silicon Valley backgrounds, so they bring that culture,” said Stewart Noakes, co-founder of TechHub, a global community and workspace for tech entrepreneurs. “That’s changing the Indian norms. It’s becoming ok to fail and try again.”

Big names like Flipkart can also mean the prospect of a lucrative exit for investors, covering a multitude of failures. To be sure, the pace of change is slow in altering a culture that has produced top software engineers for decades, but – as yet – no Google, Apple or Twitter.

Cheap engineering talent keeps startups afloat far longer than in Silicon Valley, where companies last less than two years on average. And the freedom to fail remains restricted to a small portion of India’s corporate fabric, booming tech cities like Bengaluru or Gurgaon outside New Delhi.

There is also still no revolving door with big corporates, whom one senior Bengaluru headhunter described as beating down salaries of executives who dared to risk – but then came back.

ROLE MODELS

India learns to 'fail fast' as tech startup culture takes root

But big homegrown successes like e-tailers Flipkart and Snapdeal or mobile advertising firm InMobi, as well as the multi-billion dollar firms set up by former executives from the likes of Amazon.com, Microsoft and Google, have created role models, encouraging graduates to take risks.

“With success stories, people accept it as a legitimate exercise,” said Ryan Valles, former CEO of coupon site DealsandYou and a former executive at Accel Partners, now working on a new project.

Meanwhile, billions in investor funding have fed the sector. External cash – as opposed to more traditional bank loans tied to individuals, or family savings – makes a difference. Failing there can involve walking away Silicon Valley-style, not years of court proceedings in a country with no formal bankruptcy law.

There has also been, to date, no major collapse.

“What’s happening is healthy: people recognising that some things will fail, that it’s largely a failure-based industry, in the same way that movies, music or pharmaceuticals are,” said Shikhar Ghosh, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.

An estimated 70-90% of start-ups fail.

But the biggest test may be the first bust after the boom.

“That will be the test: whether people come back into the market and how they treat the people who lost their money,” said Ghosh. – Reuters

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Monday 22 December 2014

Education: alleviating poverty or causing it, funding children with retirement fund?

It is not prudent to fund children’s education with your retirement fund

EDUCATION is the social game changer. In poor countries, it alleviates poverty. In developing nations like Malaysia, a more educated population can catapult us to developed status.

Scores of parents are striving hard to send their children to international schools to gain the holistic education, have better choices of tertiary institutions and have access to better paying jobs.

Borrowing future funds

Sending children to international schools is deemed the ticket out of mediocrity in Malaysia and to have a fighting chance in the global job market. But to what end?

Whether it is using EPF savings or selling off property to fund children’s private or international school education, this can be costly to many middle-class parents. While it may be acceptable to borrow funds to ensure our children get better secondary or tertiary education as they can always pay off the loans when they become employed, it is harder to replace “lost” retirement funds.

Therefore, it is not a prudent move to use funds meant for retirement as the fund is most needed when the “parents” are not at income-generating age any more.

Prioritising funds

With today’s Gen X-ers who are becoming parents at later age, we not only have to nurture our children but also care for our ageing parents whilst saving for our retirement. Prioritising investments is key.

1. Be realistic. Parents want the best for our children. If education savings are started early to take advantage of compounding effect, that’s great. If funds only permit an overseas tertiary education, then find the best local education option as our children can still experience holistic learning during university years abroad.

2. Gen Y-er parent, start investing now into a diversified portfolio. It is already too late if you have not started, as the cost of education will only increase.

3. Education is not just about getting the paper qualification. It is about learning. Parents can show kids new ways to learn without busting purses. Take advantage of free online courses like TedTalk or Khan Academy and “experiences” offered by museums, art galleries, nature trips and even playtime in the park.

By CHEONG WAI KUAN, VICE-PRESIDENT OF SUCCESS CINCEPTS LIFE PARTNERS

The writer can be contacted at info@successconcepts.biz / http://www.successconcepts.biz/ The Star/Asia News Network

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Thursday 18 December 2014

How WhatsApp founder made it big from rags-to-riches?

Once a cleaner at a grocery store, Koum's fortune changed the day he got the idea of an app that would allow people to send text messages via the Internet instead of sending SMS.

WhatsApp users worldwide received surprising news when Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp announced that Facebook was buying over WhatsApp for USD19 billion in cash and stock. It is by far the biggest acquisition made by the social networking giant to date. Prior to this, Facebook closed a deal with Instagram for USD1 billion in 2012.

WhatsApp Messenger is a successful cross-platform mobile messaging app that allows users to exchange messages without having to pay SMS bills. All it needs is an internet data plan. In addition to basic messaging WhatsApp users can also create groups, send each other unlimited images, video and audio media messages. WhatsApp currently has 600 million users worldwide.

Jan Koum, now a billionaire from the deal made with Facebook, was born in a small town outside Kiev, Ukraine. He was the only child of a housewife and construction manager and the family led an austere life. At the age of 16, he moved to Mountain View, California with his mother and grandmother. His father stayed behind with plans to follow on later.

To make ends meet every month, Koum worked as a cleaner at a grocery store and his mum worked as a babysitter. He even had to line up to collect food stamps during those tough times. His mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1997 and they lived off her disability allowance. It was in the same year that Koum’s father became ill and passed away. His mother too eventually succumbed to cancer and passed away in year 2000.

At the age of 18, Koum developed an interest toward computers. He taught himself computer programming by purchasing manuals from a used-book store and returning them after he was done. He then enrolled in San Jose State University and moonlighted for Ernst & Young as a security tester. After that he worked for search engine company, Yahoo! Inc.

Koum’s work involves inspecting Yahoo!’s advertising system, which led him to cross paths with Brian Acton (later co-founder of WhatsApp).

Over the next nine years, Koum and Acton were pulled in to help launch Yahoo!’s advertising platform. Koum recalled Acton’s words, “Dealing with ads is depressing. You don’t make anyone’s life better by making advertisements work better,” Koum was not happy with the situation as well.

In September 2007, Koum and Acton decided to resign from Yahoo!. After taking a one year break, Koum and Acton started looking for jobs. Both applied and got rejected by Facebook Inc. It was two years later in 2009 that Koum bought an iPhone and realised that the App Store would unlock future potentials. Koum had the idea of an app that would allow people to send text messages via the internet instead of sending SMSes. He named it WhatsApp that sounds like “What’s Up”.

It became an instant hit among iPhone users after the app was uploaded to the App Store. Koum insisted not to sell ads on the app after his bad experience dealing with ads at Yahoo! for years. WhatsApp was growing big worldwide and the founders decided to charge an annual rate of USD1 to its users. They were surprised to know that users are willing to pay to use the app.

WhatsApp gradually brought in USD5000 in revenue every month by 2010. Acton helped out Koum by investing USD250,000 in WhatsApp. As a result Acton was named co-founder of WhatsApp. By early 2011, the number of users are growing at an immense rate, and it is adding an additional million users everyday.

WhatsApp became one of the top 20 of all apps in the U.S App Store. Two years later, Sequoia invested another USD50 million. This resulted in WhatsApp being valued at USD1.5 billion.

In 2012, Koum received an email from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg was very interested at what Koum built and hinted to Koum at his interest in combining their two firms.

After two years, Koum and Acton signed and sealed the deal with Zuckerberg on the door of the welfare office where Koum used to collect food stamps.

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in February 2014. Its by far the most lucrative engagement in tech history.

This deal seals Koum as tech’s new billionaire, pocketing USD6.8 billion after taxes. The agreement also appoints Koum as Facebook’s new board member - a rags-to-riches story that should inspire all nerds out there.

Source: JobStreet.com, the No.1 job site in Malaysia, thesundaily.com

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Wednesday 17 December 2014

Startups sharing ideas and seeking validation from others to progress and gain benefits - final part 10

Start building relationships with investors

ENTREPRENEURS are naturally protective of their ideas. Understandably, they keep their ideas to themselves to avoid having them stolen.

Don't keep it to yourself Tell your idea to as many people as possible and seek their opinions. Talk with people you trust and whose opinion you value.

While it is important to protect proprietary information from being copied, entrepreneurs can also gain valuable insight and perspective from feedback before investing heavily in a product that only looks good conceptually.

A startup’s journey is very much akin to running a series of experiments before it finds a path to sustainable growth. A product or an idea should be subjected to validation before it can be tweaked and scaled up to form a viable company.

And what better way to get some form of early validation than to share your ideas with like-minded people for constructive input.

While entrepreneurs are more willing to share and discuss their ideas these days, this culture of sharing is still new in the local scene.

Seasoned entrepreneurs have found bouncing ideas off other people to be more helpful than harmful. Apart from getting feedback on their ideas, they note that more often than not, sharing connects them with other people who can help fill the gaps and turn ideas into reality.

Additionally, sharing ideas and resources could also help accelerate innovation in a field.

For example, American electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors recently announced that it will be making its patents available to other companies that want to use them.

Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk explained that the move would help advance electric vehicle technology.


 Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, unveils the dual engine chassis of the new Tesla 'D' model at the Hawthorne Airport October 09, 2014 in Hawthorne, California.

“Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day,” Musk had said.

By allowing the use of its patents, industry observers note that Tesla will be clearing the way for more collaboration with other electric car makers to develop new technologies and would enable the company to take a leadership role in developing standards for the industry and its value chain.

Entrepreneurs are increasingly being encouraged to share and collaborate to innovate and build better products.

And a beauty about being in the present time is that there are more ways than ever to tap into a support network that can provide startups with a platform to share and build on ideas and resources.

Some of these platforms include spaces such as incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces. Apart from being just a shared working station, incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces have evolved into collaborative work spaces that provide entrepreneurs with the opportunity to meet and collaborate on ideas with a host of other people to innovate better solutions.

Additionally, there are various forums as well as startup events and programmes that provide a conducive environment for entrepreneurs to network, share ideas and work together. There are also a number of agencies that are targeted at guiding entrepreneurs with developing their ideas.

Most entrepreneurs still worry about letting on too much on their ideas. But if they can overcome that fear, entrepreneurs stand to gain much from collaborating with one another.

Take advantage of the entrepreneurial community brought together by such platforms to innovate and rather than develop your ideas in silos.

■ This is the final article in a 10-part tie-up between Metrobiz and the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creative Centre (MaGIC) to explore startup ecosystems.

By Joy Lee The Star/Asia News Network

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Thursday 11 December 2014

Startups rising from failure - part 9

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again- this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford

Startups can learn much when they do not succeed

Success stories have always been a source of great encouragement for struggling entrepreneurs. It seems easy enough to romanticise accomplishments.

After all, there seems to be no shortage of stories on budding entrepreneurs who worked hard to develop great products that were later acquired for hefty price tags.

Perseverance pays: Grove says he learnt the value of persistence when the bursting of the dotcom bubble drastically altered the company’s fortunes in 1999.

In reality, the path of entrepreneurship involves plenty of speed bumps, potholes and dead ends.

Entrepreneurs who have made it often recount how they lacked time for anything other than work, how they had to fumble through everything on their own and how some of their ventures failed before they became successful.

Additionally, entrepreneurs are making a big bet by putting their money into something that has no promise of returns on top of not having a secure income for what can be extended periods.

But serial entrepreneurs persevere through their failures.

Patrick Grove, co-founder and chief executive officer of Catcha Group, understands the importance of picking up the pieces and persisting after a failed attempt.

Grove established Catcha Group, which holds a portfolio of online assets, in 1999 and had plans to list the group on the Singapore Exchange the following year.

But shortly before the exercise, the Nasdaq crashed and brought the end of the dotcom bubble.

Subsequently, Grove and his partners were saddled with debts of US$1.5mil (RM5.2mil).

Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, he slashed his headcount, diversified the business and persisted.

Grove refers to that period as “the school of hard knocks.”

But in the end, Catcha got its groove back and Grove went on to list four online companies.

“I learnt the value of persistence… because we were humbled early on, we don’t forget that,” Grove said in an interview with an Australian publication, adding that it is alright if entrepreneurs fumble.

MyTeksi technical head Aaron Gill is likewise no stranger to failure. Before joining the Malaysian startup that has grown regionally, Gill had three failed ventures under his belt.

His ventures had started off with ideas good enough to obtain government pre-seed funding from the Multimedia Development Corp and Cradle Fund. But the companies did not survive.

However, Gill says that his failed attempts taught him a lot about running a company and managing a team.

Additionally, he learnt the importance of being focused when running a business and the need for structure in the face of expansion.

Grove and Gill are only two of many more entrepreneurs who have encountered hardships before finding that one successful startup. The road taken by entrepreneurs is often long, winding and certainly stressful.

But fear of failure shouldn’t stop entrepreneurs from taking risks. There are rewards to be reaped from thinking outside the box and pushing boundaries.

The lessons learned from failures can be brutal. But taken the right way, these lessons can bring you one step closer to success.

Entrepreneurs describe themselves as people who hop from one failed business to another until they hit a jackpot. To them, failure is a part of their experiences.

■ This is the ninth article in a 10-part tie-up between Metrobiz and the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creative Centre (MaGIC) to explore startup ecosystems.

By Joy Lee The Star/Asia News Network

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Sunday 4 November 2012

Why Failure is so important to Success?

Failure and more importantly studying others’ misfortunes is one of the most important educational tools we have. In fact there is an entire convention in the Bay Area for technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers and designers to study their own and others’ failures and prepare for success, thefailcon.com. We had the amazing opportunity to chat today with Caroline Cummings, VP of Marketing at Palo Alto Software. As the former co-founder and CEO of two technology companies, she’s experienced both start-up failures and successes, and has raised close to $1 million in investment capital.

Her first venture, OsoEco.com (healthy social shopping), dissolved in 2009. Her second venture, RealLead (mobile marketing for real estate) sold in early 2012. She has co-founded several successful entrepreneurial programs for the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, including Smart-ups Pub Talks and the Southern Willamette Angel Network. Not only has Caroline had an amazing career where she has had the opportunity to be both entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial, she strongly believes in paying it forward through mentorship. “I think the secret to the universe is mentoring,” said Cummings.

She has created what she calls “The 10 Reasons Why a Startup Fails” to help other entrepreneurs avoid some of the detrimental mistakes that she has made and witnessed over the years.

1. The Wrong Team – as Jim Collins noted in his book Good To Great, “start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.”

2. The Single Founder – finding the right co-founder is critical. To find the right partner you have to be able to recognize the skills that you do not posses and be willing to admit that you have shortcomings.

3. The Wrong Legal Team – Caroline found that having legal counsel that was not well-versed in business law was one of the biggest mistakes that her failed business encountered! Make sure you have sound, credible counsel and do your due diligence.Caroline suggests that you need to trust your gut when it comes to your legal counsel but also has laid out some questions that you should ask any legal representative you are considering:

  • Have they worked with your industry?
  • How much time do they have to spend with you?
  • Who else do you go to if they cannot be available to you (partners)?
  • Have they raised rounds of financing before?
  • If so, have they created/read a Capitalization Table?
  • Have they done compensation packages?
  • Do they have experience with IP protection?
  • Do they have experience with Global Expansion?
  • Do they have experience with exits, M&A’s, IPOs?

4. Boiling the Ocean – Is your concept completely new? Will you have to teach your potentials consumers about your product, will there be a learning curve? Can you borrow techniques that have already been created or partner with companies that already exist?

5. Not Talking to Customers – often entrepreneurs do all of their concepting and creation within a bubble either because they are afraid someone will steal their idea or because they want it to be perfect before releasing it to the world. Lean Start Up methodology has taught us to find our MVP (Most Viable Product) and roll with it. Test the product, concept or service to see if it is viable. It doesn’t have to be perfect right out of the gate, get feedback, make changes, pivot where necessary. Include your customers in your research and development.

6. Stealth Too Long – If you are too slow to draw, you may miss your opportune time to launch or worse yet, someone else might beat you to the finish line. Take advantage of all of the tools and information out there to help you get your business up and running (like www.chic-ceo.com and many easily accessible books like “The Art of the Start” for example.)

7. Stuck on Original Idea – although it is important to have a clear direction for your company, you must be nimble when it comes to having a successful startup. Opportunities arise, projects fail and situations change.

8. Taking Dumb Money – when you are raising capital and spending money other than what your company has generated, you get a say in the transaction. Don’t just take a deal because you need the money, be smart about what the money brings with it. Look for investors that are willing to mentor you, introduce you to contacts and take a significant interest in the success of your organization.

9. Founder-itis – “An organization faces founder’s syndrome or founder-itis as the scope of activities widen and number of stakeholders increase. Without an effective and inclusive decision making structure and process there is potential for conflict between newcomers who seek effective involvement with organizational development and the founder(s) who seek to dominate the decision making process. This can be very disruptive both to the organization and to the individuals concerned and should be carefully and clearly diagnosed and addressed quickly and decisively.

10. Spending Too Much Money – Often startups think that once they hit a certain threshold they can become less frugal. Frugality is a virtue that many startups have a hard time managing. It is important to be willing to spend where necassary but to manage the bottom line. Luxuries like fancy office spaces may not be necessary in the startup phase.

Jody Coughlin By Jody Coughlin, Forbes Contributor 
Jody Coughlin is the CMO and co-owner of Chic CEO – a free resource for female entrepreneurs. You can follow her and Chic CEO on twitter at @ChicCEO.

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