The serial entrepreneur and talk show host explains why failure, humility, and persistence are the real keys to startup success.
If experience is truly the best teacher, then Tom Style may be ready for his tenured professorship. The serial entrepreneur and host of the popular The Tom Style Show on YouTube can boast many successes in his career. But if asked about the lessons he has learned, Style wants to talk about failure being his greatest teacher. Style shares why he embraces failure and the other important (and possibly counterintuitive) lessons he has learned in his tech career.
Failure
Style seems immune to the fear of failure that many entrepreneurs grapple with. He says this is because he has learned more from his failures than his successes.
“Failure isn’t something to avoid. First, because it is unavoidable. But more importantly because if you embrace it, you can learn from it and build toward future success,” Style says.
He credits failure as the fuel that rocketed his meteoric rise from failed college startup founder to aerospace engineer to successful entrepreneur to talk show host to respected mentor in the startup community. Failure taught him everything he needed to know to succeed. And spoiler alert, he still fails all the time.
“The more you fail, the more you learn,” Style says. “I am still learning and trying new things, so I am still failing all of the time.”
Style credits this mindset with defining his career. Rather than letting fear usher him through the unpredictable world of tech entrepreneurship, he sought to embrace failure and accept its lessons. He uses these lessons to mentor the next generation of founders with a realistic picture of what both failure and success bring to their careers.
While unicorns and overnight successes get the most press, Style offers the counter-narrative. He contends that failure contains the most lessons and, as a bonus, teaches humility (more on this later) and patience. He seeks out these stories for The Tom Style Show.
“I don’t want to only celebrate the winners,” he explains. “Aspiring founders, or even people with a great idea with no idea what to do with it, need to hear the whole story of how a startup really happens. Every great success story has an element of failure in it.”
It’s that courage to keep going, even after setbacks, that Style believes separates successful entrepreneurs from those who give up too soon.
“You can’t get too attached to your first idea,” he says. “Most of the time, it won’t be the one that works. But the process teaches you more than any business class ever could.”
Humility
Of course, with the acceptance of failure comes humility. Style admits this can be a hard lesson to learn, especially given the type of personality that is drawn to entrepreneurship.
“Humility is underrated in the startup world,” he notes. “Often, big personalities are attracted to taking big risks. It’s easy to get caught up in your own hype, especially after some early wins. But staying humble keeps you grounded and open to learning.”
Style admits that he has fallen into believing his own hype. After experiencing success with several ventures, there were moments when he was humbled when projects didn’t go as planned.
“I thought I had it all figured out,” he says. “Then I launched a new product, and it flopped hard. Having to back to the drawing board humbles you pretty quickly.”
Humility allows entrepreneurs to find their blind spots, seek advice, and adapt, Style says. It keeps you grounded and focused on seeking improvement instead of glory.
“The best founders I know are the ones who are constantly learning,” he explains. “They know they don’t have all the answers.”
Persistence
If failure and humility are essential, the real secret, according to Style, is persistence.
“The founders who make it are the ones who just keep going,” he says. “They get knocked down, they lose funding, they hit roadblocks. But they find a way to keep moving forward.
Style has seen persistence pay off in his own ventures and through The Tom Style Show, where he interviews startup founders, investors, and creators.
“I’ve learned through my show that brains or connections are not the keys to success,” he shares. “The ones who refused to quit when things got hard are the ones that make ir.”
Persistence, in Style’s view, is the essential quality that bridges the gap between failure and success. It’s the ability to take the lessons from a failed venture and apply them to the next idea, over and over again, until something clicks.
Embracing Lessons
Through his mentorship and The Tom Style Show, Style is working to change the conversation about tech entrepreneurship. His show regularly highlights founders who’ve failed spectacularly before eventually finding success, offering a more honest and nuanced view of what it really takes to build something great.
Tom Style’s philosophy on failure isn’t about glorifying it. He wants to reframe failure as a necessary part of the process.
“Failure isn’t the opposite of success,” he says. “It’s part of the process. The faster you understand that, the faster you’ll grow, not just as an entrepreneur, but as a person.”
For Style, success isn’t measured by exits or funding rounds but by the resilience and growth that come from pushing through the hard moments.
For more information, visit www.tomstyle.com.
