This is a blog about business mistakes: my own gaffes and other peoples’ more prominent snafus. My hope is that, by shining a bright light on these mistakes, I can help new entrepreneurs innovate more swiftly and less painfully than I did by offering them a chance to avoid making the same costly faux pas that others have already made.

Industry pundit Esther Dyson long ago voiced some sage and pithy advice in just four words: “Always make new mistakes.” (Esther graciously allowed me to use her quote as the title for my blog.  Many thanks, Esther!)

These four words contain two powerful messages. The first is to always make mistakes because they are the lifeblood of the trial and error process that is essential to innovation. I feel certain that the most innovative people are the most error-prone. An aspiring entrepreneur who is afraid to make mistakes will never reach his/her potential as an innovator.  I remember my trumpet teacher when I was a teenager told me “If you’re going to make a mistake, make sure everybody hears it,” another way of saying “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.”  If your audience can’t hear your mistakes, they can’t hear your music either.

The second part of Esther’s message is to make new mistakes. Smart people learn from their mistakes, and they don’t make the same mistake twice. Really smart people also learn from the mistakes of others. This is not plagiarism. It’s a foolish waste of time and resources to make a mistake that someone else has already made, especially when it affects other people like your customers and employees. Eleanor Roosevelt said it well: “Learn from the mistakes of others. You cannot live long enough to make them all yourself.”

If you want to learn from the mistakes of others, you’ve come to the right place. I am especially well qualified to write about this topic because I have made so many mistakes over the past 40+ years. I am a serial entrepreneur, a veteran of 11 start-up ventures.  I founded three of the companies and was CEO of five of them. Two of these ventures, excite.com and Sun Microsystems had very successful IPO’s.  However, during this entrepreneurial journey, I also made well over $1 billion dollars worth of mistakes!  I’m likely nowhere near done making mistakes, which means that I am assured a never-ending source of material for this blog.

So, this is a blog about mistakes, many of which are real whoppers made by me and others that are skilled at making mistakes.  Some are blunders that affected millions of people and/or torched tens/hundreds of millions of dollars. Alongside my tale of each mistake, I will also try to offer up some ideas about how the mistake could have been avoided or more quickly mitigated.  Without that, it might sound like I am just whining.  I always hate it when someone bitches about how screwed up something is without offering an idea on how to fix it.

One more thing:  I’m a newbie blogger, so I’ll make blogging mistakes too.  I would love to hear any feedback you’re willing to share about my blog, and there’s no need to be gentle. I have developed a thick skin over the years living down all of these bloopers. Your feedback and coaching will help me to always make new mistakes.