# When a business fails, who is to blame? - Author: Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz (@mfurkanyilmazzz) - Canonical: https://furkanmind.com/en/mind/when-a-business-fails-who-is-to-blame - Status: Testing (testing) - Topic: My founder stories (https://furkanmind.com/en/topics/girisimcilik-hikayelerim) - Published: 2026-10-18 - Updated: 2026-10-18 - Language: en (translated from tr) - License: CC BY 4.0 - Note: AI translation of Furkan's Turkish original (Claude via MCP) — not yet reviewed. ## Thesis When a business fails there are always outside causes to blame, and most of them are fair, but if you only blame the outside you will be right and learn nothing, because the only part you can fix is the part of the problem that comes from you. ## Summary ## When a business you started fails, who is to blame? Don't answer right away. My own answer changed a lot over the years. Today I'm telling the story of how one of our projects failed. There were plenty of things outside to blame. But the real culprit was us. Accepting that changes a lot. ## Patile The year is 2018. We built a social network for animals, called Patile. The idea came from my wife, Sevin. Back then Instagram was full of animal accounts. People opened accounts for their cats and dogs and posted through them. So we thought: why shouldn't this have a place of its own? Over dinner one evening, Kemal joined in. The partnership we still have today started there. The other side of the story: neither of us knew how to code. I set up an off-the-shelf software package, then we tried to improve it. We also opened and ran animal accounts ourselves. The project didn't even last a year. ## Mills's distinction I studied sociology. One of the first books we read in first year was C. Wright Mills's *The Sociological Imagination* (*Toplumbilimsel Düşün* in Turkish). Mills makes an important distinction: is something a personal trouble, or a public issue? I still remember the example clearly. If one person is unemployed in a city of 100,000, that is their own problem. But if 50,000 people are unemployed in the same city, it is a social problem. The place to look is the system itself. ## The culprits outside Looking at Patile through that lens, the culprits are ready: 1. Social media is a genuinely hard space. The more users you have, the stronger you get, the more of a monopoly you become. 2. Users and money both pile up in one place. 3. Pulling this off against Instagram is very hard. All of this is true. Through Mills's eyes, that looks like the problem. ## How did we get into that space? But you also have to ask: how did we get into that space? We went in without experience. We went in without capital. A social media business needs a lot of effort and a lot of time. We had none of that. The structure set the rules of the game. But entering that game the way we did was our choice. ## Why do we always look outside first? Psychology calls this the self-serving bias. When things go well we say "I did it", when they go badly we say "the circumstances made it so". It isn't only bad people who do this. Everyone thinks this way first. Our brain is trying to protect our confidence in ourselves. But blaming only the outside is the biggest obstacle to growth. When you blame the outside, what you're really saying is: "There was nothing I could have changed." If there was nothing you could change, there is nothing you can learn either. You walk into the next business with the same mistake. ## "I made a mistake" and "I was bad" are not the same sentence For me the real point is to separate these two sentences. "I was bad" talks as if something is wrong with your character. "I made a mistake" describes a wrong action. Actions can change. Character changes very slowly. Making mistakes is completely normal. Human nature is prone to error. We could even see that as good news. You can't change Instagram. You can't change the economy. You can't change the problems of your country or region. The part of the problem that comes from you is the only area you can fix. ## What I learned after Patile A business exciting you doesn't mean it will succeed. Finding the right sales channels, making a business plan and sticking with the boring parts turned out to be the most critical pieces. Learning that without living it feels very hard to me. And that is usually the part of business nobody talks about. Mills is right up to a point. Sometimes you really can't change the structures. But if you see only the outside as guilty every time, you won't make the slightest progress. Because you completely ignore the part of the problem that comes from you. If you blame the outside, you'll be right. But you won't learn anything. I also have a story where the problem really was outside. Let's talk about that one later. ## Open questions - How do you tell a situation where the outside cause really decided things from one where you're defending yourself? - Which decision would change if you asked "is the structure setting the rules of this game?" before going in? ## Sources - C. Wright Mills, *The Sociological Imagination* (1959, Turkish: *Toplumbilimsel Düşün*): the distinction between personal troubles and public issues. - Self-serving bias, social psychology. - The first part of Patile's story: [Ortaksız büyüyemezsin](https://furkanmind.com/mind/ortaksiz-buyuyemezsin) ## Distributions - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-rD6OA77Xg — views 2, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCy924-V20o — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL6Qu-wcAKo — views 2, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITdikleevrs — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UUMTUPOGWo — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpvSVDJjlQQ — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhLEq2hKitM — views 2, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA3MUOI0tyk — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9nb6c69G6Y — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MkLHsZtWdA — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL-LSq2wz0g — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqhQ_nE5qNM — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4P1HY-xsRM — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_jANq--qhY — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld6h6vK-l9E — views 0, likes 0, replies 0 - YouTube @Muhammed Furkan Yılmaz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2o7m-Kumhk — views 2, likes 0, replies 0 ## Linked nodes - → related → Pieter Levels: his worst year became the year that changed his life (pieter-levels-en-kotu-yili-hayatini-degistiren-yil-oldu): What makes Pieter Levels worth telling about is not the money he makes, but that in his worst year he set himself a goal to keep from losing his mind, told everyone about it, and that year became the one that changed his whole life. — https://furkanmind.com/en/mind/pieter-levels-worst-year-changed-his-life - → related → Are we rowing for nothing? (bosuna-mi-kurek-cekiyoruz): The effort we put in does pay off somewhere, but usually not right away and not where we expect it; the only real measure is being able to honestly say yes to "did I do everything I could?" — https://furkanmind.com/en/mind/are-we-rowing-for-nothing - → extends → You can't grow without a partner (ortaksiz-buyuyemezsin): What holds a partnership together is not the wins you share but your willingness to risk losing together. Once you succeed, partners are easy to find. The hard part is having someone you can share failure with. — https://furkanmind.com/en/mind/you-cant-grow-without-a-partner