As someone who works in the internet world, I like to hear internet success stories. Stories of cool ideas becoming game changing products and big money keep me going and give me hope for what I'm working on. To me, the Googles, Facebooks and Amazons of the world are something to be studied, appreciated and mimicked. Their stories are my textbooks, and like most internet folks, I soak up every drop of knowledge I can from them.

But when it comes to the companies that don't make it, well, I don't spend too much time on those.

I think this is partially because it hurts us to see the downside of this hyper-fast, flavor-of-the-week, often random business environment that is the web. And hey, it's a bit scary to look at the failures - and even scarier to imagine being part of one.

But beyond that, I don't really focus on the failures because the entrepreneurs from the companies that fail often want to move on, not dwell, and try something new as soon as possible. Get back on the horse, etc.

In short, the stories don't get told, they get buried, shrugged off, and not shared. And hey, who's gonna publish a book about a failed small business anyway?

Today I ran across a blog post that changed my mind - and in truth - the story of failure gave me more insight into making a start-up successful then the pile of success story books sitting behind me gathering dust.

Take some time to read the lessons learned from the failure of the promising internet company Monitor110 - as seen through the eyes of Monitor110's co-founder Roger Ehrenberg.

Because as British scientist Sir Humphry Davy observed, "The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures."