'Fail Faster And Let Go Of Your Ego' - Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales: 'Fail Faster And Let Go Of Your Ego' 

Written by Entrepreneur Country on Monday, 01 July 2013

Speaking at ACCELERATE 2013 last week – the UK's flagship festival for high-potential businesses – Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales spoke on the dangers of 'tying your ego' to your business and relayed his journey from 'geek' to world-famous entrepreneur, which started with the question: "Why not do it on the internet?"

Wales offered his top tips to over 1,000 of Britain's high-growth businesses, gathered in Liverpool to hear from entrepreneurial speakers such as Thea Green founder of Nails Inc, Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com, Renaud Visage, co-founder of Eventbrite and Ed Wray,founder of BetFair.

During his speech, Jimmy Wales gave his top five tips on making it big:

1. Fail faster: It’s easy to stick to an idea that’s not working out. You can end up wasting millions that way. Don’t tie your ego to a particular business.

2. Don’t fear failure: If you’re based in Silicon Valley and your business fails, you get a pat on the back and a great job at Google. If it fails in the UK, it’s perceived as a huge black mark against your name. That attitude has to change.

3. Don’t wait for the perfect business idea: There’s this mythology that a massive, genius business idea will hit you and you’ll make a billion dollars overnight. That almost never happens. Most entrepreneurs learn through a string of failures.

4. Have the right people around you: My approach is always: “Everything will be fine.” I’m a pathological optimist so I surround myself with pessimists who tell me all the things that could go wrong.

5. Ignore all the rules: Be bold enough to change the way things are done.

Wikipedia is currently the fifth most visted site in the world, with over 600 million visitors every month. Jimmy ended his speech on the day saying; "in 500 years I would hope people look at Wikipedia as a resource that united people all over the world, allowing them to bring knowledge together in the most convenient way that made its mark and changed the world."