Failure is Funny

A Letter from the CEO of Mint Comedy

Very few people will tell you a success story and expect you to laugh. There's nothing funny about how someone kicked ass at life. You can be happy for them, but when were happy people ever very funny?

Love at first sight isn't funny. A terrible first date is. Father Knows Best isn't funny. A deadbeat dad is. Successfully making it to the bathroom isn't funny. Shitting your pants is.

Comedy demands failure. Every comedian will tell you the necessity of the bomb: the more you fail, the closer you get to the truth.

That's the idea behind Mint Comedy.

We've tried a lot of things over the years. Some of them worked. Some of them definitely didn't. But every swing got us a little closer to what we're trying to build: more great comedy, in more ways, from comics you already love and ones you haven't heard of yet.

I joined Mint after what I would call an impressive series of comedy-specific failures. I did stand-up for roughly a decade (I truly hope you've never seen me perform). I opened and managed a comedy club (we didn’t even make it a year). I produced several specials (has an A-list comedian ever yelled at you while you were getting a tattoo of Lady Thor? Me neither…).

After all of that, I'm still here trying to get to the truth.

So we'll keep taking swings. We'll try new formats, bet on comedians we believe in, and occasionally make something that completely bombs.

Good.

Because if we're never failing, we're probably not trying anything interesting.

And if we're not trying anything interesting, we're probably not making anything very funny.

Brandon