I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain
This article is a bit trite. What I thought it would be about is a different kind of upstart fear: fear that telling the world about your product will cause competitors to steal your idea or approach. I think that balancing act is more difficult than being afraid of failure.
If I were evil, I'd point out that the East Coast attitude towards failure is much less forgiving and therefore a NYC VC needs to put lots of focus into alleviating it.
Although ... are unnecessary stealth startups based on fear of potential competition more common on the East Coast? I'm all too familiar with that concept, I just don't know if there's less of it in SV.
I think the causal link is the other way. Fear doesn't cause failure, impending failure causes fear and It's easy to be confident when it looks like you're going to succeed.
Brad Feld and Fred Wilson are talking about different ways of handling the same challenging situation. They have enough experience not to get causality reversed here.
I'm responding to the part of the article where Fred opines that a balance is needed, and quiet confidence is probably best. That's helpful to someone whose imbalance is not being quiet enough. But you can be too quiet as well. I think more information is needed to truly find balance.
I think it also comes from the people that you are leading, the organizational culture and the national expectations for behavior. I have a colleague that responds best to aggressive speech, but another that communicates best one-on-one in non-meeting scenarios. Communication can be hard for people who are used to being precise in order to be understood -- sometimes being understood isn't enough. Effective communication goes beyond being understood and extends to the emotional and cultural aspects of the conveyance of the message. The easier it is for someone to listen to you, the deeper your message will penetrate. The problem is that "ease(message)" varies by individual.
