I believe the correct answer is that it depends on how a person cashes in on the experience. If someone learns from the experience gained and parlays it into a bigger success — that person was successful. I do not believe in failures — only experiences that can always be turned into greater success. On the other hand, what if someone loses a small amount of money in a couple experiences, but ends up make hundreds of millions in the next as a result of what that person learned or ideas that were born out of the experience?  In the big picture, they became a huge success and those experiences contributed to it.The answer to the question is that I never lost money, but I paid for my experience and insight with two types of experiences:

1. Companies I was a stakeholder in that went out of business and I lost my stake or investment in time, but I did not have control of, and
2. A couple ventures that I started in marketing products that I absorbed into other enterprises or just shut down and liquidated.To me they were losses, on the surface. The only big losses I had were in investments in business that I did not control or start (the number is in the millions). It made me tougher, wiser and more cautious. I cashed in on those experiences and learned from them — ended up making hundreds of millions as a result. That’s why I believe the best investment is to invest in myself. If a business can’t carry itself on its own cash flow or if there is no definitive plan to liquidate the expense and become profitable — it probably isn’t worth the effort and will lose in the end if it is financed.