So handling mistakes is always an interesting question, and what we always try to do at SCVNGR and LevelUp is differentiate between two types of mistakes: there's sort of point mistakes, where someone does something wrong in a given instant, and there's process mistakes, where someone is consistently thinking about doing something wrong or tackling it the wrong way. And we actually try and reward point mistakes, because that means you're experimenting: you hit a fork in the road and you go one way and it works out, it doesn't -- that's actually worthy of being rewarded. it's process mistakes that you've got to be really afraid of when people are consistently thinking about something wrong and there you have to take a lot more corrective action.
How do you handle mistakes?
Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja, SCVNGR+
Seth Priebatsch was born in Boston, MA at the age of 7. At the age of 12, he founded his first web start-up. It failed gloriously, achieving profits several times those of Twitter. After completing his freshman year at Princeton (the official requirement to achieve the term dropout), Seth took a "leave-of-absence" to pursue SCVNGR. The goal? To build the game layer on top of the world. As Chief Ninja of SCVNGR, Seth is solely responsible for corporate acquisition of all Nerf-based technologies. An avid supporter of blood drives, Seth consistently donates plasma for use in large-screen televisions.
