“There’s more to learn from failure than success”- #JimmyWales, Co-Founder of #Wikipedia during his Live Class on Unacademy
Bengaluru: Unacademy, India’s largest learning platform, today hosted a Live Class by Jimmy Wales, Co-founder of Wikipedia. The renowned internet entrepreneur conducted the session as part of the Legends on Unacademy program. The Live class was a huge success with close to 15,000 learners in attendance.
During the Live session, Jimmy Wales spoke at length about his early life and ventures that propelled him to envision and create the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Highlighting his real life experiences, Jimmy spoke about his entrepreneurial journey and how he had to face a number of failures before eventually succeeding. He elaborated on his experiences from failed entrepreneurial attempts such as Three Apes and Nupedia, before talking about his successful ventures such as Wikipedia, The Wikimedia Foundation, Fandom and WT Social.
In the 60 minute session, Jimmy Wales addressed multiple questions asked by Unacademy learners such as how to deal with criticism, the importance of higher studies to become an entrepreneur, how can technology help a post pandemic world, how to be a successful entrepreneur in this competitive world and many more.
Key learnings shared by Jimmy Wales during the session were:
– There is a myth that budding entrepreneurs should have a genius idea to ensure success. The truth is that the ‘one’ or ‘maybe none’ of the ideas will work for an entrepreneur.
– Entrepreneurs know the importance of learning more from failures than from successes
– Love for learning is one of the bedrock principles that one should follow to achieve success
– If you want to do something for your target community, you have to create an innovative product that your community can enjoy throughout
– The only way to know whether your idea will work or not is to fail faster – the faster you fail, the quicker you know what not to do
– You should not tie your ego with a particular business. You need to consider yourself as an entrepreneur first and enjoy the long journey to success.
– Success, at times, can be defined as the learning that you gather through the process of achieving your goals
– Creative thinking is important in an entrepreneur’s life
– You should continue with your learning journey, irrespective of your age and how much success you have achieved. Continuous learning will make life more fun and interesting.
– When someone criticises you without any action point, try and not take it to the heart. Instead, think of newer things, which can set you apart from the crowd.
– Higher studies are really important and with technology one need not follow the traditional route. E-learning is a great route for that.
Earlier in March, Unacademy announced the commencement of the ‘Legends on Unacademy’ program with the idea of bringing legends from different walks of life to teach life lessons through Live Classes. In March, these Live Classes were conducted by legendary cricketers such as Brian Lara, Brett Lee and Jonty Rhodes, through the association with the Unacademy Road Safety World Series. In April, renowned personalities like Shashi Tharoor, Kiran Bedi, Virat Kohli, and Anushka Sharma took Live Classes to inspire learners on the platform. Additionally, the recently concluded sessions include the ones with Sunil Gavaskar, Sourav Ganguly, Zev Siegl, Mary Kom, Abhijit Banerjee and Randi Zuckerberg.