[MUSIC]
It's cold and dark.
A bitter, unrelenting snow surrounds you.
It's three A.M., and you've been walking through downtown Boston for over an hour.
You went to MIT, and you launched a successful start-up.
But, that's over now.
And all you can ask yourself is, how did I end up here?
You don't know and you can't sleep.
So you walk that frigid two and a half miles in the middle of the night.
This is my life in November 2012.
I spent two years in the trenches building my first real start-up.
Finally tasted success only to watch it drift away.
I had learned what it meant to rise and now I was learning what it means to fall.
Abraham Lincoln said that we are greedy to publish the success of our efforts but
shy as to publishing our failures.
And that we are ruined by this one-sided practice of concealment
of blunders and failures.
For me, that ends today.
This is a talk about falling.
One night in 1999, my family and I were about to drive back home from dinner.
I was busy playing one of the greatest games of all time.
Pokemon red.
[LAUGH] It's a great game.
I got a new Pokemon.
I was so excited.
I ran to tell my mom.
But, I didn't quite make it.
See, I don't remember seeing the curb in the parking lot that night.
But I distinctly recall the taste of cement when [SOUND] my face hit
the ground.
Falling is.
Painful.
My mom picked me up and saw that one of my two front teeth had been pushed down,
and was now the better part of two millimeters south of where it should be.
[LAUGH] Not good.
We rushed to the emergency room.
They told us to call the dentist, and he said, I can see you in the morning, but
by then it'll be too late.
If you wanna fix this, you're going to push it,
you're gonna have to push it back up yourself.
I was 10, but these were permanent teeth.
And if you feel queasy right now, imagine how I felt.
>> [LAUGH] >> I grabbed my mom's hands and
squeezed as hard as I could.
Crying, pushing it one.
Two millimeters back into place and it worked.
See?
[LAUGH] Sometimes falling isn't a choice,
but getting back up is.
Investors in start-ups often say that one of the biggest risks in
early stage companies.
Is the team.
I couldn't agree more.
Let's go back to 2012.
It was a bright day in August and I went for
a walk with my co-founder, as I often did.
But, this time, something wasn't quite right.
The summer had been a rollercoaster.
Ups and downs.
And I could just feel it as we were walking.
Something was very wrong.
We sat down to talk and I looked at him and said what I could not believe but
knew to be true.
Look, if you're gonna fire me, just do it.
And he did.
We'd started this together.
And he fired me.
I went back to the office that night to get my things, and, I looked around and
saw the company I had helped build, and the products I helped create.
And in that moment, I felt like I had lost part of myself.
Leaving the start-up was complicated.
We both had leverage and we began to negotiate.
I'd never done this before.
And I made just about every mistake in the book.
Every time we'd come close to reaching an agreement.
I'd just be overtaken by fear, and ask for something new, something more.
What should have taken weeks turned into months.
I was winning the negotiation, mind you.
But at the same time I was losing what was left of our friendship.
I felt terrible but I couldn't find a way out.
And by Thanksgiving I was burnt out.
I was done.
What had started as a simple negotiation, had become a chronic illness with no cure.
But sometimes it's our darkest moments that provide us with the greatest clarity.
And from that low vantage point, it all made sense.
I had become so afraid.
In Boston, I hadn't just lost my start-up.
I had lost myself.
I had forgotten about the future.
I knew then that I had to stop trying to win.
So that's what I did.
I forgave my friend and I forgave myself.
Fewer shares would be enough.
This changed everything between us.
And in that moment, we became old friends again.
And he even agreed to help me sell enough shares to take a year off.
You know, it was one of those win, win scenarios I've always heard about.
[LAUGH] They actually do exist.
The process wasn't easy, but by the end of 2012, I was free.
You know,
my greatest fear in leaving the start up was not the money or my reputation.
My greatest fear was becoming a guy named Pete Best.
Now, Pete Best was the first, the original.
Drummer for The Beatles, but you may not have heard of him.
Not because he missed out, but because shortly after leaving The Beatles,
he didn't play a single show for 20 years.
Steve Jobs was fired from Apple only after making the cover of Time Magazine,
but because he kept growing and learning.
He ended up on the cover of not one, but five more times.
I had a choice to make.
Would I keep growing?
Would I keep learning?
In my year off I moved to Austin, Texas to build a live and
work design studio with my friends.
It was awesome, and Austin is an incredible place.
I chose, I chose Austin because it, it's the city where
it is whatever you need it to be and it would be my place to recharge.
We ended up using the studio as this incredible retreat and
we invited all kinds of people down to visit us.
Entrepreneurs, musicians, engineers, screen writers and
even a National Spelling Bee Champion came.
It was awesome.
Seriously there aren't that many.
[LAUGH] But, you know we together we talked about falling and
what it takes to get back up again and again.
I discovered that this is called grit.
University of Pennsylvania professor Angela Duckworth
defines grit as perseverance and passion for long term goals.
She says that these goals can take years, even decades to complete.
And her research shows that this requires unwavering focus.
But wait a minute, wait a minute,.
If being gritty means sticking with your goals,
then what about leaving the start-up.
How do these things match up?
So when I got the chance to interview her, I asked about flexibility.
Professor Duckworth told me that less gritty people have it backwards.
They're a little too flexible about their long term goals.
And at the same time, too rigid about how they get there day to day.
Gritty people, on the other hand, are the complete and total opposite.
Dead set on their long term vision and
at the same time pretty flexible about how it happens.
When you know where you want to end up, exactly which path you take.
Is less important.
On my path, I had fallen.
And though my time in Austin was an absolute gift,
I knew that I couldn't rest forever.
I came to Stanford to learn about the future of hardware.
I came to Stanford to learn about how to start consumer brands that enchant
the world.
I came to Stanford to get.
Back up.
And as you walk on your path, I can almost guarantee that you will fall and
that it will hurt, but remember that it's okay to be flexible.
And sometimes, you know, it's not just okay, it's necessary.
Grit is having the patience and the tenacity to keep after it.
Until you can get there, no matter which way you end up going.
When you fall, and when it hurts, and when that path grows dark.
In that moment of doubt and pain, remember what I have come to know deeply.
Your future, our future.
Is brighter than the darkness.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]