Facebook’s mental model for failure, Kobe Bryant’s relentlessness, and reasons for startup death

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Facebook’s mental model for failure

“There are two ways to fail and the consequences are orders of magnitude apart.

If you fail because you built something poorly, then yours is an abject failure. The only thing to learn from such a failure is that the team in question was ineffective.

But if you execute to a level of quality that makes it unlikely that another team, even with more time and effort, could succeed, then yours is a convincing failure. This kind of failure is strategically valuable because we can now eliminate an entire development path from consideration.

A convincing success is unquestionably the goal of every effort, but a convincing failure should be a close second.

If you punish all failure then who will take any risks? But if you reward failure then what is the point of succeeding at all? 

We tend to agonize over the risk of executing something poorly but the much bigger risk is building the wrong thing to begin with. A convincing failure is actually a great success.”

Source: Convincing Failure by Boz, CTO of Facebook

2: Kobe Bryant’s relentlessness

“Kobe sprinted through life like no one I’ve ever known. He had no hobbies or distractions. Didn’t play golf, didn’t hang out with buddies, didn’t go to parties. Occasionally, he’d decide to see a movie and would rent out the whole theater so he could take a small group of friends or family to see it privately, usually twice in a row.

Otherwise, he trained. He practiced. He studied film. Besides his beautiful family, which was his top non-basketball priority, his entire focus centered on one obsession: Winning.

For twenty years in the NBA, Kobe sprinted from season to season, game to game, quarter to quarter. He never slowed down, and he couldn’t comprehend those who did.

He’d hear about a group of players heading to a concert or a party or another sporting event, and he’d rarely join them. You go ahead and do that, he thought. I’ll be right here doing this. That was his time to elevate himself, to do the work others weren’t doing. He believed the extra work added years of advantage and experience to his skill set. He had no patience for waiting or rebuilding.

He began and ended every season the same way: racing toward a championship.”

Source: Winning by Tim Grover

3: Reasons for startup death

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See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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