When milk turns bad, it becomes curd. When curd turns bad, it becomes cheese. There is always value, if only we learn to see it. The secret is in perspective. What most of us dismiss as waste, others recognize as transformation. In the world of startups, this principle is not philosophy—it is survival.
Every entrepreneur begins with milk. Fresh, unspoiled, brimming with potential. The first pitch deck, the first product demo, the first investor handshake—it all carries the sheen of promise. But milk, no matter how pure, cannot remain milk forever. It will change. It must change. The market demands it. Consumers test it. Competitors challenge it. And very often, what looks like freshness one day turns into what many would call failure the next. But is it failure—or is it just the natural progression of transformation?
Take Twitter. It started as Odeo, a podcasting platform that was struggling when Apple announced iTunes podcast integration. By all accounts, Odeo was finished. The milk had curdled. But instead of giving up, the team pivoted to a microblogging platform that would eventually reshape global conversations. Milk had turned to curd. Similarly, YouTube began as a dating site called “Tune In Hook Up.” Nobody cared. The idea flopped. But the founders saw something in the act of uploading and sharing videos. That pivot became the cheese—a platform that today processes more than 500 hours of content uploaded every minute.
The startup world, however, does not always reward this perspective. In India, for instance, the cultural weight of failure still hangs heavy. According to a 2024 Inc42 report, nearly 80–85% of Indian startups fail within the first five years, often due to poor product-market fit, mismanagement of funds, or lack of scalability. Yet, in every failure lies data, insights, and experience that no MBA program can replicate. Milk turning to curd is not the end. It is simply the beginning of a new stage of value creation.
Slack offers another powerful example. Stewart Butterfield and his team were working on an online multiplayer game called Glitch. The game failed. Years of work, millions of dollars, and a dedicated team—all gone. But inside that failure was a tool the team had built to communicate internally. That tool became Slack, today valued at over $26 billion. What looked like wasted effort was, in fact, the necessary fermentation to create something richer.
And Shopify. It began as a small snowboard equipment store. The founders struggled not because snowboards weren’t in demand but because the e-commerce tools available were inadequate. Their frustration with bad software became their opportunity. Shopify is now a global e-commerce giant enabling over 4 million businesses worldwide, valued at more than $90 billion. Again, milk became curd, curd became cheese.
The tragedy is not failure. The tragedy is when founders, investors, or ecosystems refuse to recognize transformation. Too often, failed startups are discarded like spoiled milk, without considering what might have been created if the lessons were applied differently. Failure does not define an entrepreneur’s worth. It defines their growth. Each setback is not a measurement of incompetence but an indicator of how far they have traveled on the road to wisdom.
The Indian startup ecosystem is at a crossroads. We have over 110 unicorns today, yet the conversation around failure remains taboo. Entrepreneurs hesitate to admit mistakes, fearing the stigma. Investors shy away from founders with failed ventures, preferring “first-time winners” rather than “seasoned survivors.” This is a cultural blind spot. In Silicon Valley, failure is worn as a badge of honor. A failed founder is valued because they have faced the battlefield, learned the hard way, and will not repeat the same mistakes. In India, however, we are still learning to see value in curd and cheese.
Even data supports this. According to a Harvard Business School study, entrepreneurs who failed in their first venture are twice as likely to succeed in their second venture compared to first-time founders. Why? Because failure sharpens instincts. It forces clarity. It tests resilience. It weeds out arrogance. It transforms milk into cheese.
But this mindset requires change at every level. Policymakers must create safety nets that don’t penalize entrepreneurs for shutting down ventures. Investors must recognize that experience born out of failure can be more valuable than naïve enthusiasm. Founders themselves must embrace mistakes not as shame but as education. After all, no startup truly “fails”—it simply evolves into something else, whether in the form of new skills, new products, or new opportunities.
In life and in startups, transformation is inevitable. Milk cannot remain milk forever. Likewise, no startup remains the same as its pitch deck. It either evolves into something that survives or teaches something that ensures the next attempt thrives. The real danger is not in failure but in refusing to see the opportunity hidden within it.
Our ecosystem must stop punishing mistakes and start celebrating the courage to try again. We must stop asking, “Why did you fail?” and instead ask, “What did you learn?” Only then will we unlock the true spirit of entrepreneurship. Because the reality is, even spoiled milk has value—if you know how to use it.
The story of milk, curd, and cheese is not about food. It is about life, business, and vision. If you see only failure, you waste it. If you see transformation, you create lasting value. Startups are not defined by whether they become unicorns but by whether they create impact—sometimes in ways very different from the founder’s first vision.
Our mistakes are not a measurement of who we are but who we have become. They are evidence that we dared, that we learned, and that we transformed. Like cheese that carries richness milk never had, entrepreneurs carry depth that only failure can give. And it is this depth that ultimately defines lasting success.
Milk will turn. The only question is: will we throw it away, or will we turn it into cheese?
