A different kind of CV

Conversations with friends, colleagues, and classmates often revolve around missteps in our personal and professional lives. Most of us recognize that failing is part of life and, to a degree, we understand that it helps us grow. We read about how great achievers, past and present, routinely experienced colossal setbacks. We are constantly bombarded with mantras, such as “to succeed, one must be open to failure” or “fail fast, fail often”. Yet, a common takeaway from my conversations is that we all still struggle with failure.

We hate to fail. We fear it, we dread it, and when it does happen, it burdens us. It takes power over our emotions, and sometimes prevents us from moving forward. Some of us go to great lengths to avoid failure because of all the pain and shame associated with it. And some of us try to hide it.

Reframing failures and turning them into opportunities for learning and growth is not easy. There are plenty of frameworks out there and it takes time to figure out what works best for you. However, I recently came across an unconventional concept that I found very refreshing and practical.

It’s a CV of failures! I first encountered the idea in a Nature article, written by Dr. Melanie Stefan, currently a lecturer at Edinburgh Medical School, after she got rejected for a fellowship to which she had applied. According to Stefan, the CV of failures is a running, up-to-date list of every setback one has faced. It could include unsuccessful job applications, refused business proposals, or rejected research papers. Stefan is a person of tremendous achievement, but she realized that for every hour she had spent working on something that succeeded, she had probably spent six hours working on something that failed.

Stefan acknowledged that the problem with ignoring those setbacks is that it leads to false perceptions of how success comes about. “As scientists, we construct a narrative of success that renders our setbacks invisible both to ourselves and to others,” she wrote. “Often, other scientists’ careers seem to be a constant, streamlined series of triumphs. Therefore, whenever we experience an individual failure, we feel alone and dejected.”

The simplicity, honesty, and generalizability of the concept captured my curiosity. After a brief research online, I was able to find an example of such a CV published by Dr. Johannes Haushoffer. By any measure an accomplished academic, Haushoffer shared publicly a long and detailed account of his disappointments and setbacks. Through Haushoffer’s CV, I found more examples here, here and here.

And CVs of failures can be used by companies as well. Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the country’s oldest venture capital firms, has been very successful by investing in startup companies, such as LinkedIn, Yelp, Pinterest, and Blue Apron. Over the years, though, it also chose not to invest in deals that would have led to big returns, including Apple, eBay, and FedEx. At most VC firms, these missed opportunities would be treated as dirty little secrets. At Bessemer, they are entries in its publicly available Anti-Portfolio, basically a CV of failures for its partners.

Here’s the entry on not investing in Facebook: “Jeremy Levine spent a weekend at a corporate retreat in the summer of 2004 dodging persistent Harvard undergrad Eduardo Saverin’s rabid pitch. Finally, cornered in a lunch line, Jeremy delivered some sage advice, ‘Kid, haven’t you heard of Friendster? Move on. It’s over!’”

Here’s the entry on not investing in Google: “David Cowan’s college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry for their first year. In 1999 and 2000 she tried to introduce Cowan to ‘these two really smart Stanford students writing a search engine.’ Students? A new search engine? In the most important moment ever for Bessemer’s anti-portfolio, Cowan asked her, ‘How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage?’”

I understand that reckoning with mistakes or missed opportunities could be emotionally draining. But perhaps a willingness to chronicle our failures could help us create the kind of resilience that allows us to go beyond them. My CV of failures is already in progress.