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Yes you do learn more from your failure then your success… but it still sucks.

Chris O’Brien writes about FailCon 2010 in San Francisco, a conference dedicated to… you guessed it… failure. The idea is that we can learn from the mistakes of other versus our own experience.

Here’s the summary:

• be honest and transparent, it’s not worth covering up bad news
• Confront the elephant in the room: Don’t let bad situations fester. This will avoid creating even deeper resentments over time.
• Minimize the pain: Don’t sign long-term commitments with vendors or employment deals. If you need to, be able to shut down the company in 15 days with no obligations remaining.
• Hire believers: Every startup is a drama with inevitable highs and lows. Build a team that will be able to cope with both.
• Plan for success: Assume the system you build at first won’t be the last. Be ready for the challenges of expanding the system for more users.
• Take the money and run: Yes, every entrepreneur believes they are going to be the next Facebook. But most won’t. So if a good buyout offer comes along, take it.

I think that’s the definition of wisdom (learning from others and the world around you) vs. knowledge (personal experience).