If there's one thing I learned in this web 2.0 world, it's "fail fast". If there's one thing I learned from my asian parents, it's "failure is not an option". I hated my parents for this growing up, but I've come to appreciate it.

When you go into something knowing that there's no option to fail, you hustle in ways that the less paranoid never would. The impact of this is incredible, and I think that a good way to increase your chances of succeeding is to find ways to make it so that failure is as far from an option as possible.

This means burning all of your ships: leaving school, quitting your job, and telling everyone you know that you're working on a startup. Since taking grant and investment money from numerous people, I've felt a personal pressure to push forward that I hadn't before. I'm obliged not to fail, and my productivity is noticeably stronger now.

A few things that I don't approve of:

1) People who do "consulting on the side". These almost always fail, because the entrepreneur isn't in a sink-or-swim mentality. They justify it by citing how much money they make through such little work, and that's all true. But no matter what, at the end of the day, the entrepreneur is giving him or herself the permission to screw up the company and go back to the financial security that freelance consulting provides. I say they burn their ships and focus on what they actually care about.

2) Doing school while building a company. It doesn't work at all. I tried it back in middle school, I tried it in high school, and I tried it as a junior and senior at Berkeley. Even if you say that you don't care about your grades, it doesn't matter, because you're inevitably going to lose productivity and give yourself more permission to fail. As Paul Graham says in one of his essays that student entrepreneurs can always go back to school and discount their failure as a side project that didn't go anywhere. And that's why it makes me cringe when I hear my classmates applying to grad school or jobs so that they have a "backup option". Which brings me to the worst offender:

3) Keeping your job, making business a "side-thing". This implies that you won't quit the security of your job until there's traction or investment funding, yet you're not going to find either unless you're working day and night on your startup. It's a catch-22, and something has to give. I remember meeting people last year who said they were working on a startup, yet keeping their jobs in the meanwhile. They said that they were "considering leaving their job", which meant that they were too scared to do so. A year later, they're still in the same job, and their startup didn't go anywhere.

The main critique to burning one's ships is that you're incurring huge risk by doing so. If you don't have any backup options, what happens if and when your company fails? If I had to answer, I'd say that it won't come to that, because you forfeited all permission to fail by leaving your backup options on the table. But realistically speaking, it's not that bad. You're a great engineer working on your new startup, but Google's trying to recruit you to work there. Tell them to go away, and they'll probably be back in the event that your company fails.

Now proactive things you can do to decrease your permission to fail: - Telling everyone you know about your company. Every time you see friends, they'll ask you "how's your company doing?" And you're going to want to have good things to say. - Join an early stage accelerator program like YCombinator or TechStars. I think this is critical, because you feel an immense amount of pressure to stay on top of all of your peers. You want to save yourself the embarrassment of having a crappy product to show for, and you don't want to let down your earliest backers. Because they're counting on you.

To sum this all up, it comes down to one thing: psychology. There's an incredible psychological impact of knowing that you can't fail, and it's artificially tapping into your evolutionary instincts. If you perceive that you're about to get killed, you're going to work that much harder to stay alive.

Most entrepreneurs hate their competition. Many of my friends would come up with a brilliant business idea, only to decide not to pursue it because someone else has already begun doing it. But if anything, they should be happy, because competition means two things: validation of a business idea, and pressure to innovate. If someone else is in your market, at least you know it's something worth solving. And if someone else is in your market, it means you have to create something truly useful. But investors don't always see this perspective... if anything, the first question I get asked is "how are you going to deal with Intuit as competition?" It's a reasonable question that I've put a lot of thought into.

The first thing to keep in mind is that for most internet companies, competition is irrelevant. As our friends at Zoho.com say, "... if there's anything I've learned from my years in the tech world is that companies don't get killed by competition, they usually find creative ways to commit suicide." Zoho is right, and we remind ourselves of that everyday here at Indinero. Chances are that your web startup will run out of funding, a co-founder will leave, or your inability to create a useful product will lead to the destruction of your own enterprise. And if you're able to get past those first barriers to entry, then I'll allow you to think a little about your competitors.

Now lets say that your company has an infinite cash runway, your company is capable of building a product, and you know that it won't commit suicide anytime soon. Even then, competition shouldn't be your primary concern. If you created a list of all of your competitors, 90% of them could probably be crossed off your list of concern because of their inability to innovate quickly. And of the remaining 10%, plot them on two axes: who is innovating, and who are you losing potential business to. You'll find that more often than not, no competitor is on the top right of the graph. It's often a big company (in our case, Intuit) that we're losing business to, and we know that they're not innovating at the pace that we are. More nimble startups, on the other hand, often make for good inspiration! Their mere existence, even if they have a better product than you do, does not mean that they'll be the reason for your failure. Keep in mind that your company will probably commit suicide in a creative way, and you'll never have the opportunity to evade the startup competitors you fear.

One valuable lesson I learned back in my middle school days was that having lots of competition was a good thing: I was in the web hosting space, which was and still is notorious for having terrible service providers. The rules I listed above applied to web hosting 5 years ago in that 90% of the competition was irrelevant, and many of the big players weren't doing anything particularly creative. There was an obvious pressure to do more than just provide diskspace and bandwidth to clients, which means that companies that couldn't keep up were able to fail earlier in the process. If anything, these failed companies should thank the competition for having saved them time!

So the next time you think of a business idea, embrace your competition and build your offering around unique things that your "big rival" isn't doing, and will likely never do. And if a friend or investor asks about your competition, you'll know precisely how to respond.

"Jessica, honey, baby, you're a smart girl, but your business idea is total shit, and none of your friends are going to be honest like your mommy is."

Hearing that hurt more than having teeth pulled, but it was for the good of humanity. It made me realize that most people refrain themselves from giving you negative feedback because they want to support you. If you have any relationship with the person you're asking feedback from, they'll find good things to say about your business idea, even if it's a lard of crap. As an entrepreneur, it's your job to get them out of this comfort zone, telling you the brutal truth.

Not only are people too nice when it comes to getting feedback on our business ideas, but many of us sub-consciously seek out "constructive advice" from people who we know are going to give us positive feedback. When someone compliments our idea, it's tempting to move onto getting more "constructive feedback" from other friends who we know will pat us on the back.

When starting a new company, you have the entire entrepreneurial community on your side. "Your idea is fantastic, and you should ignore all of the naysayers!" But I'm going to suggest something different: Instead of ignoring them, talk to as many of them as possible, and figure out why your business could potentially fail. By doing so, you'll be able to anticipate pitfalls that you can then account for. Not to mention, you'll be better able to sway the minds of people who would otherwise be skeptical of you and your idea.

People are too nice. Friends and colleagues will praise you for your entrepreneurial ambition, even if they sub-consiously think your idea sucks. I speak from experience -- when a good friend of mine pitches a business idea to me, I'm tempted to think only about the positives. It's my friend, so I want to uplift his or her sprits! But upon greater thought, I realize how flawed the business is, and I wish my entrepreneur friend knew what I thought.

I've been working on a stupid business idea for the past few weeks, and I've been so pumped about it after getting positive feedback from most of the people I talk to. But just this week, I pitched the idea to my mom. As a successful entrepreneur, I thought she'd be able to give good constructive feedback. And "constructive feedback" she gave. Within 10 seconds, she was able to give me a dozen reasons for why my business idea is flawed, and for why I lack needed experience to see it through.

I thought three things: 1) "Wow, my idea sucks", 2) "Wow, I'm a failure for an entrepreneur", and 3) "Wow, my mom's doing a fricken good job at convincing me not to drop out of college". I cried my brains out from thoughts of being a failure, then recovered with newfound knowledge on how to actually improve on my business. And of course, with renewed motivation to prove naysayers (like my mom) wrong.

Nobody wants to hear how much their idea sucks, and that's because most naysayers are shitty at providing constructive criticism. The last time my mom criticized my entrepreneurial abilities, we were driving to the airport. I remember wanting to jump out of the car rather than to hear her tear apart my dreams. I told my mom, "Why do you hate me so much?!" As an entrepreneur, you probably understand that having someone tell you that your idea sucks is analogous to being made fun of in middle school. You feel like you're hot shit, and then moments later, you realize that you're a loser who didn't know any better.

So suck it up. The best criticism acts like a slap in the face, and you realize that you're dreaming stupidity by thinking that you and your business is great. Maybe I'm a masochist, but I like it when my friends (and mom) tell me the fundamental flaws behind my business. As a smart entrepreneur, drag your friends to their feet and have them offer legitimate reasons for why your business could fail. With a sense of humor in all of this, you'll ultimately be a better entrepreneur, with answers for everyone who questions the purpose of your company's existence.

I definitely have highs and lows. Often, I’m at the high of a new idea–one that I think can be REALLY promising. This feels good. Really, really good. Mmmm. It’s so happy and life is worth living. But then, swinging to the lows, which are filled with disheartening moments of despair where I think to myself: it’s not worth it, everyone’s doing something, there’s no way to compete, even babies have their own pet projects, *kills self in self-hating moment*
- Anonymous Blogger

I read that quote a few nights ago, and I practically laughed myself to sleep. I love that quote, because it's true (and false) in oh so many ways. Many of you have had the pride and joy of thinking that you know the next billion dollar idea. For scholars, a similar feeling is found when you come to a philosophical epiphany. The high is so great, that it's difficult to get your mind onto anything else.

But also, as many of you know, that feeling sometimes hits its rock bottom when you think that your business idea won't work and your peers find the concept stupid at best. This is where I come into disagreement with the writer of the above quote -- I don't understand why people won't even attempt to make their business idea work. If they're convinced that their idea is the "next Google", how could it hurt to at least disprove that it is?

There are three types of amateur entrepreneurs out there, and in my young life, I've been every single one of them. By coming to terms with my failures, I'm more prepared to classify which type of amateur entrepreneur I am, and thus preventing myself from failing in the same way again.

Type 1 Amateur Entrepreneur: All ideas, no implementation.

Let's admit it. All of us have at some point thought of the brilliant, billion dollar idea. We brainstormed it out, thought about how rich and successful we'd be from having thought of the idea, then dreamt about living lavishly in a penthouse overlooking Central Park with enough money to feed every starving child in Africa. I've done it, and I know you have too. The problem lays in the fact that most self-proclaimed entrepreneurs are great at dreaming and envisioning their business idea, yet they lack the capability (and even willpower) needed to see it through. In my honest opinion, these people cannot be considered legitimate entrepreneurs if all they know is dreaming and allocating the task of implementation to others.

As a 5th grader, I started my first "company" and convinced my entire class to join me in my quest to build the internet's latest and greatest entertainment portal. Of course, I didn't know how to build anything more complex than a basic HTML website. My classmates lost faith in me, and I went down as a failed, type 1 amateur entrepreneur.

Type 2 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas and half assed implementations.

These entrepreneurs think of good ideas and have the willpower needed to start working. However, they take the "fail fast" mentality way too far -- they'll launch a prototype of their project, put in almost no effort in getting it noticed, then call it a failure. Or even worse, I know of some entrepreneurs who dedicate months of their time working on a startup idea, but never end up launching. If you're going to fail, at least make people think that you spent your time semi-wisely. Alternatively, type 2 amateur entrepreneurs have multiple ideas that they're simultaneously working on, and figure that they'll get rich from at least one of them. To you and me, this is obviously flawed logic. But at one point, I was a type 2 amateur entrepreneur.

A few years ago, Alex Notov and I co-founded Shockapps.com, a pathetic startup that made numerous, half-assed attempts to launch a successful facebook app. We got a lot of users and made some money, but with a concrete and focussed development strategy, we could have gone much further. We'd launch three apps in a single month, but all of them sucked, and only one of them got traction. When your mind is distracted by the thought of getting rich from multiple business ideas, it can be difficult to follow the rationality behind having focus.

Type 3 Amateur Entrepreneur: Lots of ideas, lots of implementations, and absolutely no focus.

Type 3 entrepreneurs are marginally better than type 1 and 2 combined, but they have absolutely no time for anything other than their work. They make a solid attempt to see their business idea through, but get distracted by the idea of another growth opportunity. I feel bad for these people more than anything -- they try harder than both type 1 and 2 entrepreneurs, yet they often see just as devastating results. (and mostly on their psychological well-being)

Let's say Johnny has an idea for a million-dollar idea. He starts working on it, gets traction, and a loyal client base that's paying for his service. He then finds another growth opportunity -- perhaps a multi BILLION dollar idea that he thinks he should be pursuing. He's locked into business #1, so he can't just drop it. So Johnny starts building up business #2, it gets traction and a loyal user base, and now he's stuck handling two completely different companies. Now how lame would that be?

Unfortunate for my mom and I, but of us have been sucked into the trap of being a type 3 entrepreneur. In fact, my ninth grade business partly failed because of this trap. I started a simple, easy, cheap web hosting company as a way to cover the costs of having a personal website. I then realized that leasing expensive, managed, server solutions to small companies would bring me much more profit. Both businesses were doing pretty well, but they were sucking up all of my free time. What ninth grader should have to deal with the pains of school, running two companies, and the onset of puberty? Gag me with a spoon.

Going back to the quote -- yes, everyone is "working" on a project, but 99% of self-proclaimed entrepreneurs fit into one of the three profiles above. If you've thought of the next billion dollar idea, please refrain yourself from being an amateur entrepreneur. If you find yourself as being an amateur entrepreneur, it's not too late to change. Pick one idea that you're passionate about, and whole-heartedley follow through with your implementation. Forget about the babies who have their own pet projects! If you don't put in the effort to build your company, you'll see nothing but a self-hating outcome. To the blogger who wrote the quote above: when you make the time and find the resources needed to make your idea a reality, you'll experience the bliss of knowing that you've contributed to something amazing.

I'm not sure if I believe in the saying, "all things happen for a reason." It seems as if people tend to say that in order to justify for a loss. However, it IS possible to justify for a loss by doing something about it. The time that you would have spent working on your now failed company can instead be used to learn about business, which in the long run will help you with a bigger and better company. While this seems to fit into the saying "all things happen for a reason," wouldn't that be somewhat misleading?

Instead, how about we think about a recent loss as a reason to do something else meaningful? Let's take Al Gore for example -- he lost the race to the White House. He could have sat like a couch potato doing nothing, but instead, he found himself a cause to invest himself into. If anything, his mental well being depended on his ability to find a cause for him to dive into. In this case, the better saying is, "losing the presidential race made Al Gore a better person because he did something that he couldn't otherwise do as the President." Without the burden of political bureaucracy, Al Gore has the capability to take on global warming in ways no President ever could. His failure didn't so much happen for a reason -- he instead took advantage of his failure because he didn't have a choice.

I'm against the idea of thinking of life as being self-guiding because it doesn't motivate individuals to take advantage of their loss. Instead, it provides temporary pain relief. If my mom died tomorrow from heart disease, I wouldn't say "all things happen for a reason." That would be careless and if anything, premature for me to say. Instead, I would probably invest myself into helping others with heart disease. I would invest my time, money, and maybe even my entrepreneurial ventures towards that cause. And only through the means of doing something would I be able to say "my mom's disease made the world a better place." It's a terrible thought for me to bring up, but it shows the mentality of taking a misfortune and having it act as a guiding force in one's life.

To be quite honest, my last company wasn't originally guided by my quest for leadership. I wasn't hungry for money. There was a cause in my personal life I felt committed to, and the profits of running a company could contribute to that. I decided to run a company because I felt that it would yield me the most return in the shortest amount of time. I decided to run a company because I felt driven by the idea of creating something out of nothing. They were simply means to achieve a goal, but without an end result in mind.

So the company I was working on died. As I've mentioned many times before, it was forced into selling because my team and I were limited on cash. To adults, I call it failure. To kids, it can be seen as an "ambitious effort." The company died, but I didn't think it was appropriate to label this failure as something that happened because "all things happen for a reason." That'd be stupid and un-jessica-mah-like. However, in the following few months, I was able to land myself in college. I devoted all of my time towards finding a way to skip two years of meaningless high school, which I wouldn't have been able to do while running a company. I took advantage of what otherwise would be opportunity cost. I devoted myself towards getting me into college because without that cause to strive towards, I wouldn't be able to cope.

In hindsight, it would be safe to say that if I hadn't sold out, I'd be stuck in high school. However, that was never my intention. My intention was to do whatever I possibly could while ignoring previous failures. With the examples I've listed above, maybe the concept of previous failure makes more sense. Maybe there's a reason why those who've failed find new success in the future. Just try to apply the above examples to your personal life and it might just guide your future in ways you've never thought of before.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

My young entrepreneur friend Mazy told me about a Facebook group where everybody was talking about what they would do if they knew they couldn't fail in life. In anything! Of course, the majority of the people in this group were raving about how awesome it would be not to fail, but my friends Matt and Mazy knew better: without the potential to fail, how could we motivate ourselves to do more with life? How could we feel satisfied with whatever we did? Sure, there's an exception when it comes to altruism, but with anything else in life, we would feel like empty souls.

Here's a quote from my other young entrepreneur friend, Matt:

Losing the ability to fail? I'd get depressed and eventually shrivel up and die. Failure is what makes everything worthwhile - what the hell is the point of life if there's no challenge?

I decline your offer of success.

And I also decline the offer of guaranteed success. If I knew that I'd succeed in business, I'd be settling for mediocrity. I could be super wealthy without spending any effort on my company, but I'd feel like a total shmuck. Without the chance of failure, you lose the motivation to work, you lose the desire to succeed (because you already know that you will,) and the concept of adventure is completely lost.

On the other hand, while it's good to be able to fail, it's a waste of energy to focus too much of your attention on the potential of failing. These things tend to be self-fulfilling prophesies.

If your company fails, (as the one I was just working on has) no big deal. You failed, but the company you work on that eventually succeeds will bring you much more of a reward. You would have earned it! The bottom line: The fear of failure is no reason not to try. Embrace the idea of failure, go into the real world, and do something amazing!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.