Panos Panay: founders must fail to push boundaries — SkimNews
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- Panos Panay, Amazon SVP of Devices, Alexa, and Leo, told startup founders onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco that 'you actually have to go fail' if you want to push boundaries.
- Panay cited Microsoft's Surface RT — the company's first tablet, launched during his 19+ years there — as a catastrophic failure that produced a nearly $1 billion write-down and a newspaper front cover that read simply 'failure.'
- Panay said the real lesson isn't the public failure moment but the decisions two years before it, including whether software was complete, inventory was right, or retail balance was wrong.
- Panay urged founders not to abandon their vision after a setback, noting that 'Surface has done pretty well,' and recommended adjusting direction by roughly 30 degrees rather than abandoning the original course.
- Panay warned that founders who 'hang on too long' are typically the ones who never actually accepted the moment of failure in the first place.
Why it matters: Panay's reframing of Surface RT's nearly $1 billion write-down as the necessary precursor to a still-successful Surface line gives hardware founders permission to absorb expensive public failures while staying mission-focused, a message with extra weight from a leader now running Amazon's devices and Alexa portfolio.
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