Are failed product bets genuinely valuable learning, or is the fail-fast doctrine overstated?

Thomas Plantenga · Feb 12, 2024

The early failures in the US and UK were beneficial because horrible numbers forced Vinted to stop expanding and spend two years making the French product genuinely good

The 2017 product was roughly a hundred times worse than today's, so being forced to grind on details — customer support, recommendations, shipping costs, payment costs — was what made later expansion work

23:23 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig

Philipp Freise · Jun 30, 2025

A meaningful failure is a prerequisite for becoming a world-class founder, and the antidote to letting past losses distort future judgement is rigorous analysis stress-tested against many strong minds

7:32 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise

Philipp Freise · Jun 30, 2025

Every failure is an opportunity — missing Spotify is what led KKR to do GetYourGuide, now a big success

He was the first institutional investor through Spotify's door but had no fund to invest from; learning from that miss produced the GetYourGuide investment

56:03 20VC: Inside KKR's Monster $8BN European Fund | The $500M Turkey Gamble That Went Wrong | Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? | Will AI Kill the PE Model? | Can The PE Model Survive without IPOs and Where is the Liquidity with Philip Freise

Matthew Steckman · Mar 23, 2026 · hedged

Anduril's failed early attempt at a sophisticated aerial system was a necessary stepping stone to its later aviation success, including the autonomous jet fighter.

They lacked the core building blocks, the team, and the understanding of how the customer buys a vehicle of that sophistication — they had to learn that lesson to re-approach the aviation market in a new way.

Scope: concedes it was not a good business decision by most metrics; concedes they probably spent too much and could have exited quicker; $20-40M sunk before realizing it was a scrap

44:10 20VC: Inside Anduril's $20BN Army Contract & Why Anduril Must Go Public | Why 99% of Drone Companies Will Die | Why There is Never an Ethical Question of How Anduril Products are Used with Matthew Steckman, President @ Anduril

Andrew Feldman · Oct 6, 2025

Sticking with wafer scale through fifteen months of failure was justified because systematic failure analysis showed steady progress toward a solution

Each failure got a full failure analysis, each fix produced a slightly better result, so they weren't running around like chickens without heads despite burning $6-7M a month

51:33 Systematic failure analysis showing incremental progress justifies persistence

Matthew Steckman · Mar 23, 2026

The popular 'learn from failure / fail fast' discourse is overblown because most people are bad at actually doing it.

He personally learns deeply from indecision and bad decisions without being haunted by them, and moves to the next best decision.

45:37 Fail fast discourse is overblown because most people cannot do it

Varun Mohan · Jun 2, 2025

Startups should be making far more internal bets and failing more, because the one bet that works pays for the hundreds that fail.

Over 50% of what they try internally fails, and the payoff structure of startups makes the single success cover all the losses.

17:34 Portfolio economics justify many failed bets since one success pays for all