Blake Lively 2011 Shankbone
Blake Lively 2011 Shankbone
Headlines

Even Stars Struggle With Startups – Blake Lively Shuts Down Preserve After A Year

The startup struggle is real. Actress Blake Lively's recent venture didn't go her way. She joins millions of entrepreneurs who have had to close up shop.
Blake_Lively_2011_Shankbone
Lively plans to take some time to rebrand and reboot.

As entrepreneurs we know that so much goes into launching your startup and pursuing it is a risk. Actress turned entrepreneur Blake Lively learned that recently with her attempt at a lifestyle website called Preserve.

She recently admitted to Vogue magazine that the undertaking didn’t turn out the way she would have hoped.

“We have an incredible team of people who do beautiful work, but we launched the site before it was ready, and it never caught up to its original mission: It’s not making a difference in people’s lives, whether superficially or in a meaningful way,” she says, on the phone from New York. “And that’s the whole reason I started this company, not just to fluff myself, like, ‘I’m a celebrity! People will care what I have to say!’ It was so never meant to be that, and that kind of became the crutch because it was already up and already running, and it’s hard to build a brand when you’re running full steam ahead—how do you catch up?”

Like all entrepreneurs, she is still processing the feeling of failure. She went on to tell Vogue:

“It’s very exciting and it’s also incredibly scary,” says Lively of shuttering Preserve. “I never thought I would have the bravery to actually do that, to take the site dark and to say, ‘You know what? I haven’t created something that is as true and impactful as I know it can and will be. And I’m not going to continue to chase my tail and continue to put a product out there that we, as a team, are not proud of.’” While she anticipates a certain amount of backlash—“Failure! Folly! We knew she couldn’t do this, too!”

We, hear you, Blake, we hear you. It’s never easy. Our friend Felix Tarcomnicu recently educated Lioness readers on how to deal with startup failure. What are some ways or strategies you use to deal with failure? We like a bottle of red wine and a sappy movie before we hit the ground running. Tell us your tactics below.

Read the complete Vogue article here.

 

photo courtesy of wikipedia

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