<story><title>ClusterHQ is shutting down</title><url>https://clusterhq.com/2016/12/22/clusterf-ed/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BinaryIdiot</author><text>How many people were employed at ClusterHQ? Honestly I never even heard of the company but I had heard of some of the open source projects. Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just out of the loop.&lt;p&gt;Also any information as to lessons learned, etc? Basically why it failed? Looking at the marketing material I didn&amp;#x27;t see anything really remarkable about it (nothing that stood out as a &amp;quot;oh this is why I would give them money&amp;quot;) so I&amp;#x27;m curious.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I’ve been part of big successes as well as failures. While the former are more pleasurable, the latter must be relished as a valuable part of life, especially in Silicon Valley.&lt;p&gt;Relished? I never really understood the Silicon Valley &amp;quot;failing is awesome!&amp;quot; mentality. Failure is failure. It&amp;#x27;s not awesome. Why would you relish it? Take the lessoned learned for sure but you likely just lost several people&amp;#x27;s money and you lost your employees their jobs, what is there to take enjoyment from? Seems a little sadistic and a tad lacking in empathy for others involved.&lt;p&gt;But maybe that&amp;#x27;s just me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nacraile</author><text>&amp;gt; Failure is failure. It&amp;#x27;s not awesome. Why would you relish it?&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re beating on a straw man.  Nobody (very few people?) thinks the failure itself is good in and of itself.  The mentality is to observe that even if a business endeavour ends in financial failure, that outcome is just one effect of a long process that had many effects, and that many of the other effects of the process were highly beneficial.&lt;p&gt;Sure, some people are out of a job, and some investment money has been lost - these are bad things, and nobody is claiming otherwise.  On the other hand, many people have been gainfully employed for some time, and have gained a great deal of professional experience.  That value has not been lost.  Open source software has been created, and continues to be useful.  That value has not been lost.  Investors have lost money on this bet, but if they distributed their risk over many bets, they are probably going to come out ahead of where they would be if they made no bets whatsoever.  Many people have learned some lessons about why a business may fail to be financially successful, and can use that knowledge to build financially successful businesses in the future.  In sum: much value has been created which would not exist if this business had not been attempted, even if it ended in financial failure.</text></comment>
<story><title>ClusterHQ is shutting down</title><url>https://clusterhq.com/2016/12/22/clusterf-ed/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BinaryIdiot</author><text>How many people were employed at ClusterHQ? Honestly I never even heard of the company but I had heard of some of the open source projects. Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just out of the loop.&lt;p&gt;Also any information as to lessons learned, etc? Basically why it failed? Looking at the marketing material I didn&amp;#x27;t see anything really remarkable about it (nothing that stood out as a &amp;quot;oh this is why I would give them money&amp;quot;) so I&amp;#x27;m curious.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I’ve been part of big successes as well as failures. While the former are more pleasurable, the latter must be relished as a valuable part of life, especially in Silicon Valley.&lt;p&gt;Relished? I never really understood the Silicon Valley &amp;quot;failing is awesome!&amp;quot; mentality. Failure is failure. It&amp;#x27;s not awesome. Why would you relish it? Take the lessoned learned for sure but you likely just lost several people&amp;#x27;s money and you lost your employees their jobs, what is there to take enjoyment from? Seems a little sadistic and a tad lacking in empathy for others involved.&lt;p&gt;But maybe that&amp;#x27;s just me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acidbaseextract</author><text>Ed Catmull, Pixar cofounder and inventor of the Z-buffer, has a great take on mistakes and failure in his book Creativity, Inc. Here&amp;#x27;s a pretty decent summary:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.brainpickings.org&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;creativity-inc-ed-catmull-book&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.brainpickings.org&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;creativity-inc-ed-c...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, we&amp;#x27;re going to fail. It happens. Might as well get it out of the way.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, failure averse cultures don&amp;#x27;t actually prevent failures, and they have a tendency to squash innovation.</text></comment>