Entrepreneurs succeed all the time, and it’s always fun to read about, and it’s always the part that gets publicized. What doesn’t get quite as much press though is the failures. Which, as anyone who’s been in business for themselves probably understands, are much more common.

The good part though is that the failures, or if you prefer, the lesser successes, are worth their weight in gold. In his The E-Myth book, Michael Gerber presented a graph that has stuck with me since the day I first read it. The graph showed success versus attempts for entrepreneurs. What is showed was that most people failed on their first or second attempts, but as they failed and learned, each successive attempt would bring more success.

This is why I’ve always believed in experimentation. I can vouch for this concept myself personally. My initial attempts at doing things on my own resulted in losses. Nothing back breaking, but I definitely pulled out less than I put on. The key though is each failure teaches a new lesson, and with each attempt, the return is a little better than the last.

This is especially important for young entrepreneurs. If you’re a high school or college student with aspirations of going out on your own and conquering the world, don’t sit on your hands and wait until you graduate, or until you have the right connections, or until you have huge amounts of capital. Try things now.

You don’t need to make a billion. You don’t need to make a million. If you don’t make a dollar it doesn’t matter. The key is that every time you test out that next idea, you’ll learn a lesson that will help ensure you do better the next time. Constant experimentation is absolutely key, and with the web only a click away and still very much a vast field of opportunities to make a buck or two, there is really no excuse not to test the waters.

You might not have time to fully invest yourself in your experiments, and you might not have the capital to take on any really serious projects, but that’s ok. A website here, a concept there, a business plan or two, and before you realize it, the amount of knowledge that you’ve gained will shock you. And this knowledge is the best kind. It will be knowledge gained from experience. It won’t be theory in a text book that you’ll read and forget. It won’t be something your Professor mentioned while you were half asleep.

Entrepreneurship can only be taught in textbooks to a limited extent. Experience is king, and the only way to get it is to give it a go. Experiment furiously and by the time you graduate, the knowledge and wisdom you’ve gained from experience will set you miles ahead of your peers who stuck to books and lectures the entire time.

First of all, and most importantly in my opinion, equity financing can bring highly valuable knowledge and experience on board. If you can obtain an investor with relevant knowledge or experience in the field of your start-up, or even just in general business, it can be one of the best moves your company can make. When an investor comes on board, they put their money on the line and take a vested interest in seeing your company succeed. You could stand to benefit a lot by having someone on board with enough knowledge, experience or connections to help your business get off the ground. That person or group could end up being your company’s most valuable asset.

Secondly, as mentioned earlier, equity investment doesn’t come with the nagging possibility of going broke and being stuck having to pay back a lender. Anyone who comes on board as an investor will generally do so fully understanding that they’ve assumed the same risk you have, which is that the possibility of failure is ever-present. Knowing this can be comforting in the start-up stages when things are unstable, especially if you’ve decided to go into business in a risky field. Keep in mind though, the riskier the business, the bigger a piece of the pie the investor will likely ask for in exchange for their investment dollars.

So there are definitely very real advantages to equity financing, and it very well may be right for you. The purpose of this series of posts was simply to get you to realize that debt financing also has a set of very real upsides. Neither debt nor equity is superior to the other, they’re simply different. As such, it’s important that you thoroughly investigate your options with both when looking for capital for your business. Don’t just jump on the equity train because it seems to be the popular choice. The benefits of debt (benefits of debt…that just sounds strange) may very well make it the choice for you!