Startup Tucson debuts F***Up Nights

Let’s be honest, everyone effs up, even successful entrepreneurs. “F***up Nights” was created for that reason — giving entrepreneurs a chance to share their mistakes with other entrepreneurs, investors, and community leaders.
Now, “F***up Nights” is making its debut in Tucson with the help of Startup Tucson.
“This is maybe the first in Arizona, its a national model,” founder and CEO of Startup Tucson Justin Williams said. “It was actually brought to us by Visit Tucson because they have an engagement affiliation with Mexico and the model started in Mexico City.”
However, the name has caused a bit of controversy among Tucson residents, according to local news outlets.

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“It’s an awesome name,” Williams said. One of the essential parts of being a successful entrepreneur is to make mistakes and base plans off the lessons from those mistakes, according to Williams. “Learning from mistakes is essential. We want to be able to foster that thinking in our community.”
Startup Tucson and Visit Tucson are hosting the first F***up Night event in their city on Wednesday, May 13 at 5:30 p.m. at Reilly Pizza.
Related: Startup Tucson awarded $1.44M to launch Thryve Next Accelerator
F***up Nights is a global movement that allows entrepreneurs to share business failure stories publicly. The idea was born in Mexico in 2012, and has since expanded to over 100 cities worldwide.
Each event typically showcases three or four entrepreneurs that share their stories about failure. There is a question and answer session after each speaker and time for networking.
One of the speakers at Tucson’s event is Tony Ford, founder of Artfire.com and Maker House.
Artfire.com, a marketplace for the craft and maker community, and Maker House, an artisan focused makerspace, recently closed.
“It’s a failure that’s fairly high profile here in town and it just happened. This will be the first time the story of what happened and why will come out,” Williams said.
The idea is to do more of these events in the future, depending on how their first one goes according to Williams.
Startup Tucson is a venture community that fosters an ecosystem of companies, entrepreneurs, and talent in Tucson.
They also host Startup Drinks, a monthly mixer that allows new entrepreneurs to become introduced to the Startup Tucson community.
Read more about Startup Tucson at AZ Tech Beat.