Those who are never seen to fail are either too timid to try, for fear of public ridicule, or simply do not desire success enough to endure the sting of failure.

Learning from mistakes is a part of startup, says Fikhman, who wasn't afraid to fail: "The worst thing that can happen is you try something, you mess up and you never do it again."

I have never seen a project fail because a portlet was too hard to build, or WebSphere Portal didn't do some bit of functionality.