Postmortem of Venture-Backed Startup, Sonar
I've been watching Ken Burns documentaries on American presidents while building and calibrating a Prusa i3v RepRap 3D printer so I can build a functional prototype for a hardware product I'm building. I find a lot of wisdom and courage in the biographies of people who have done great things.<p>Teddy Roosevelt and his father suffered from bouts of depression, and the remedy they found was constant movement. They had a saying they would repeat, "Get action, be sane". Keep moving. It's the striving that counts more than the results.<p>You've probably heard this one before but its fitting upon the death of a dream:<p>"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat"<p>- Teddy Roosevelt<p>So I raise a glass to Sonar, and all the (wo)men in the arena, whether they find victory or defeat.<p>And in the final counting it's not a defeat, it's a strategic retreat. They will fall back, consolidate their position and go once more into the breach.