FailCon

FailCon is a one-day conference for technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers and designers to study their own and others' failures and prepare for success.

We all have founded, worked for or invested in startups that have failed. We're smart, we keep up with the latest in technology trends, but sometimes just don't go as planned. How can you predict what will work and what won't? Well, you can't.

But that doesn't mean you should stop trying. It just means you should start exchanging stories of what didn't work and how you pivoted, why you couldn't raise money, what the wrong hires were like, and when you decided it was time to let go. Entrepreneurs need to hear that from each other: that it's okay to fail, it doesn't mean you're worthless. You're just like the rest of us, learning from our making mistakes and building something bigger next time.

FailCon was started in 2009 by Cass Phillipps, an event planner for startup events and Diane Loviglio, a founder of a cleantech startup.

We'd both produced or attended numerous events for the technology industry, but had begun to realize things were starting to get repetitive. Events put successful entrepreneurs on stage to talk about how they made their company great, something that's near-impossible to replicate, and never about what they learned from mistakes along the way. In talking to other attendees, we saw this was a pretty universal opinion; and so we decided to work with the community and, together, make something stronger. Our first event launched with over 400 attendees, and we've continued to grow since then. We hope you'll join us and add your unique story and experience to our own.