Making Epic Failure Fun

About a year ago, I was browsing the internet and I happened to be googling the word ‘f*ck’. In this way, I discovered F*ckUp Nights Mexico, where the whole idea had been born originally. Things went quickly from that moment on. I got in touch with the Mexican FUN team and had a chat about launching the same thing in Prague. They were excited the first city from Central and Eastern Europe was joining the global F*ckUp Nights movement.

I felt that open conversations about business failures should be encouraged among young people who may be starting their own projects. While success seems to be omnipresent – just think of all the underage millionaires on business magazines – failure is a taboo in Czech society. But what is more important for someone entering the entrepreneurial gate for the first time? Success or failure stories?

The first one took place at Cafe Neustadt last December and turned out to be a f*ckup itself – more people than we expected turned up and they could not all get in. The spotlight went down, the room was too hot. Despite all that, the speakers were first class (Miloš Čermák, editor-in-chief of ihned.cz, Tomáš Čupr, founder of slevomat.cz and rohlik.cz and Pasta Oner, a Czech graffiti artist), so was the feedback of the 150-plus audience.

Two months later, over 250 people came to be part of F*ckUp Nights Prague Volume II. We were happy to secure Jatka78 as the venue for the event. Speakers were top notch: Petr Janda who started a surprise-in-mail subscription sock business (www.ponozkovice.cz) and František Vašek who created the dumbest app to date Fingerpathy (www.fingerpathy.com). The event has grown and seems to have struck the right note with a young entrepreneurial audience in the Czech Republic.

It will be much unlike any of the past ones. Bigger, better, longer, punkier. We will be joined by a great mix of professionals: Czech snowboard cross Olympic gold medalist Eva Samková and Liftago.com founder Juraj Atlas for example. Radlická kulturní sportovna is an awesome soon-to-be-demolished site in Prague 5 that should not be missed by any buzz-addict. Eva will kick off the evening at 8pm and there will be an afterparty with in-house DJ 4’est PINE from 10pm onwards.

Although speeches will be in Czech, the ensuing conversations are often in English.

Interesting fact about FUN: It cannot be promoted in any way. Neither Facebook nor Google will let you promote anything with ‘f*ck’ in it. So FUN is pure word-of-mouth. Quite refreshing really.

For an inspiring evening of young entrepreneurial spirit. Startupists. Angel investors. And serious beers and fun.

Just out of pure academic curiosity.