Tim Armstrong's dad gave him important career advice the night before he started as AOL's CEO

pulse

June 1, 2017 9:22 PM

In an episode of Business Insider podcast "Success! How I Did It," AOL CEO Tim Armstrong talks about the risk of failure, and why it can be worth it.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong thinks failure is worth the risk.

Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, had built an impressive career for himself in his mid-30s.

"My dad said to me the night before I started, 'This is a burn the bridge moment. If you fail at this, you can't walk backwards, so you should figure out how to always look forward,'" Armstrong said. "I think that was a great piece of advice because that's essentially what we had to do over and over and over again [at AOL]."

Armstrong's entrepreneurial spirit forced him to embrace the risk of failure. And when weighing the decision to leave his cushy Google job, he realized something important:

"If this totally fails and it's the world's biggest failure, really who cares?" he said. "I'll probably learn more doing it."

He told Shontell:

Armstrong's risk paid off. He is set to become CEO of the combined AOL-Yahoo company under Verizon once the merger is completed.

Listen to the full podcast interview:

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