Failure as learning

Failure is the most widely evidenced mindset theme on the channel (about 80 episodes), largely because the ‘how I got here’ backstory question surfaces it almost every time. The dominant pattern is a long trail of failed projects before the winner: Thomas Sanlis (30-plus), Marc Lou (about 30), Will Cannon (15-20), David Park (9-10 with his co-founder), Anton (15 years and six or seven start-ups before Letterly). Guests reframe these as learning (‘not a failure unless you give up’, ‘the worst outcome is learning’) and as groundwork: skills, audiences and even viral ‘I failed’ posts that later brought clients. When founders diagnose their own failures, the most common cause is building before distribution or without knowing what users want: marketing nothing, polishing branding, or five years building a SaaS with zero customers. A second set of stories are external shocks (the 2008 mortgage crisis, the 2018 crypto crash and a regulator, Covid wiping out MRR, a licensing audit) that founders rebuilt from. The live tension is when to quit: some regret dragging a dead start-up on for an extra year or clinging to a logo, while others say the winner is the one who tried one more time. All failure counts are self-reported; one guest’s settlement figure differs from the host’s intro.

Key points

• Failure is normal: most founders go through many failed projects, often over years, before the one that works — 12 episodes. (Sebastian Ghiorghiu · Sebastian Ghiorghiu (Sep 2025) ▶ 14:06) (Thomas Sanlis · Thomas Sanlis (Aug 2025) ▶ 00:15) (Anton · Anton (Nov 2025) ▶ 06:36) +9 more
• The most common diagnosed cause is building without distribution or without knowing what users want — 12 episodes. (Louis · Louis (Dec 2025) ▶ 00:00) (Ethan · Ethan (Apr 2026) ▶ 02:59) (Ben Bozzay · Ben Bozzay (Jul 2025) ▶ 02:42) +9 more
• A failure is learning or data, not a failure unless you give up — 10 episodes. (Marc Lou · Marc Lou (Aug 2024) ▶ 13:04) (Pontus Abrahamsson · Pontus Abrahamsson (Nov 2025) ▶ 13:19) (Florin Pop · Florin Pop (Feb 2026) ▶ 10:47) +7 more
• Don’t get emotionally attached; recognise sooner when something isn’t working — 6 episodes. (Nico · Nico (Mar 2025) ▶ 15:45) (Jacob Seeger · Jacob Seeger & Alex (Jun 2025) ▶ 12:08) (Loïc Berthelot · Loïc Berthelot (Nov 2025) ▶ 12:47) +3 more
• External shocks (market crashes, Covid, regulators, audits) can wipe out a business; founders rebuild — 6 episodes. (Marc Lou · Marc Lou (Aug 2024) ▶ 08:23) (Will Cannon · Will Cannon (Oct 2025) ▶ 01:42) (Jozef Gherman · Jozef Gherman (Jul 2024) ▶ 04:23) +3 more
• Failed projects become assets: skills, audience, and even content that brings clients — 6 episodes. (Rob Hallam · Rob Hallam (Dec 2025) ▶ 05:01) (Roman Czerny · Roman Czerny (Jan 2026) ▶ 05:26) (Zac · Zac (Jun 2026) ▶ 09:51) +3 more
• Take risks in small, controlled experiments; get the failures out of the way early — 3 episodes. (Jordan Rejaud · Jordan Rejaud (Apr 2026) ▶ 12:32) (Ayush · Ayush (Jan 2026) ▶ 19:39) (Adam Lyttle · Adam Lyttle (Feb 2025) ▶ 03:42)
• Failures are about timing, distribution or market, not about you — 2 episodes. (Florin Pop · Florin Pop (Feb 2026) ▶ 05:15) (Dustin Stout · Dustin Stout (Oct 2025) ▶ 10:20)

Where guests agree

• Very few founders on the channel succeeded with their first product; the successful one typically follows a string of failures. (Pauline · Pauline (Oct 2024) ▶ 11:51) (Thomas Sanlis · Thomas Sanlis (Aug 2025) ▶ 01:16) (Anton · Anton (Nov 2025) ▶ 01:30) +3 more

Where guests disagree

When a project isn’t working, should you push on or call it? ⚠️

• Call it earlier: dragging on a failing start-up or clinging to a project without traction wastes years (Julian Gargicevich · Julian Gargicevich (Nov 2025) ▶ 14:43) (Loïc Berthelot · Loïc Berthelot (Nov 2025) ▶ 12:47) (Piotr · Piotr (Sep 2026) ▶ 07:13)
• Keep going: giving up too early is a main reason projects fail, and the winner is the one who tried one more time (Thomas Sanlis · Thomas Sanlis (Aug 2025) ▶ 02:33) (Bo · Bo (May 2026) ▶ 13:40) (Marc Lou · Marc Lou (Aug 2024) ▶ 13:04)

Frameworks

• Five reasons projects fail — Thomas’s diagnosis of why his 30+ projects failed. (Thomas Sanlis · Thomas Sanlis (Aug 2025) ▶ 02:56)
  • Giving up too early
  • Unclear purpose/headline
  • Loss of momentum (stopping build-in-public posting)
  • ‘Build it and they will come’ — no marketing
  • Timing
• Marc’s rules for his second attempt at entrepreneurship — The new identity he set after being fired, in reaction to what frustrated him before. (Marc Lou · Marc Lou (Aug 2024) ▶ 12:57)
  • Never spend months on a product
  • Never raise money
  • Never have employees
  • Make small bets
  • Share the building publicly to build a following
• Jacob’s three pieces of advice — Three things he would tell himself starting out. (Jacob Seeger · Jacob Seeger & Alex (Jun 2025) ▶ 11:44)
  • Build from day zero for the best case (could the app handle 100,000 sign-ups today?)
  • Don’t get too attached; fail fast
  • Stay bootstrapped

Tactics

• Turn setbacks into posts — After failing the Y Combinator interview he posted about it, getting 179,000 views and maybe 15 clients. (Roman Czerny · Roman Czerny (Jan 2026) ▶ 05:26)
• Ship a quick game after a long failure — After three years and all his money on failed projects, Cole asked his programmer to make a game in two weeks; that became Hide or Die. (Cole · Cole & Ian (Apr 2025) ▶ 12:12)
• Run marketing experiments daily and extract an insight from every failure. (Roman · Roman (Sep 2026) ▶ 13:09)

Stories & examples

• Five years building in the dark: His first five working years went into a SaaS with many features and zero customers or revenue, making every bad decision possible. Lesson: Building features without users wastes years. (Loïc Berthelot · Loïc Berthelot (Nov 2025) ▶ 02:52)
• Half a million dollars on two failed projects: Before Hide or Die, Cole spent about three years and around half a million dollars on a large Roblox game and a creator-marketplace company, both of which failed and left him burnt out. Seeing Ian’s quick winter-break hit, he made a game in two weeks, which succeeded. Lesson: Test first and then build; you can waste years building something worth nothing. (Cole · Cole & Ian (Apr 2025) ▶ 10:51)
• Fifteen years of failed startups: For 15 years Anton tried six or seven startups that all failed, repeatedly building unique things people didn’t really need; with Letterly they deliberately took a validated idea and made it simpler. Lesson: Improving on something already working beats inventing something nobody needs. (Anton · Anton (Nov 2025) ▶ 06:36)
• Covid wipes out $4,000 MRR: His tool for physical businesses reached $4,000 a month while he lived in Bali; when Covid closed those businesses, revenue went to zero in about 24 hours. Lesson: Revenue tied to one kind of customer can vanish overnight. (Marc Lou · Marc Lou (Aug 2024) ▶ 08:23)
• Web agency collapse: His website agency made around $300,000 profit a year at its peak, but he took on $200,000 of credit and car-loan debt for a lavish lifestyle. When Wix and Squarespace let people build a site for $10 a month, he could no longer charge $10,000; lowering prices and working more led to burnout, defaults and losing everything. Lesson: Debt-funded lifestyle and a disrupted service can collapse a business overnight. (Adam Lyttle · Adam Lyttle (Feb 2025) ▶ 03:16)
• Failure post leads to a dev agency: After five products that made nothing and a year without income, he posted about his failures; it got about 150,000 views, a comment suggested a development agency, and he got a $3,000 first client from that post, with further clients coming inbound via viral posts. Lesson: Sharing vulnerability and failures can build trust and attract opportunities. (Rob Hallam · Rob Hallam (Dec 2025) ▶ 05:01)
• A startup to 3.2 million users that never monetised: With his friend Austin Cameron he built a startup to 3.2 million active users but could never monetise it, and sold its assets. Lesson: Implied only: users without monetisation did not make a business. (Hunter Hammonds · Hunter Hammonds (Sep 2023) ▶ 03:15)
• Crypto company collapse and CFTC settlement: His first company, started at 23 with a loan from his father, helped clients into crypto; the 2018 crash wiped it out, then the CFTC alleged misuse of client money. After two or three years he settled for about $400,000, with $50,000 in costs borrowed from his parents. Lesson: Presented as a devastating setback that preceded his next idea (lesson implied by the host rather than stated). (Jozef Gherman · Jozef Gherman (Jul 2024) ▶ 04:23)
• LinkedIn-visitor idea killed by one line of code: Inspired by LinkedIn showing who viewed your profile, he tried to ‘personalise the internet’, hiring junior developers in Russia for four or five thousand, all his savings; LinkedIn changed one line of code and the project died. Lesson: He later contrasted this complex ‘blue ocean’ tech idea with building in a proven red ocean. (Guillaume Moubeche · Guillaume Moubeche (Dec 2024) ▶ 07:18)
• The 14-view podcast: The Smart Nonsense podcast, projected to reach a million listeners in six months, had 14 views after three months as unemployment money ran out. Lesson: When the dream doesn’t pay, a service business can fund it. (Dylan Jardon · Henry Belcaster & Dylan Jardon (Oct 2023) ▶ 03:11)

Numbers

• Failed projects before Uneed: 30 projects (self-reported, approx.) (Thomas Sanlis · Thomas Sanlis (Aug 2025) ▶ 01:16)
• Failed startups (his own count): 30 startups (self-reported, approx.) (Marc Lou · Marc Lou (Aug 2024) ▶ 18:50)
• Failed businesses before two successes: 15-20+ businesses (self-reported, approx.) (Will Cannon · Will Cannon (Oct 2025) ▶ 05:10)
• Years of failed startups before Letterly: 15 years (self-reported) (Anton · Anton (Nov 2025) ▶ 01:37)
• Money spent on two failed projects before Hide or Die: 500000 USD (self-reported, approx.) (Cole · Cole & Ian (Apr 2025) ▶ 10:51)
• Debt at his lowest point: 200000 USD (self-reported) (Adam Lyttle · Adam Lyttle (Feb 2025) ▶ 05:34)
• Product failure rate before vs after building in public: 90% to 10% percent of products failing (self-reported, approx.) (John Rush · John Rush (May 2025) ▶ 15:36)
• CFTC settlement total (host intro says $150,000 penalty): 400000 USD (self-reported, approx.) (Jozef Gherman · Jozef Gherman (Jul 2024) ▶ 04:55)
• Active users of his earlier startup: 3200000 active users (self-reported) (Hunter Hammonds · Hunter Hammonds (Sep 2023) ▶ 03:15)
• Products launched before SuperX, total revenue: 5 products, $0 dollars (self-reported) (Rob Hallam · Rob Hallam (Dec 2025) ▶ 04:03)

Caveats & warnings

• Keep going, but also know when a product doesn’t work and quit. (Julian Gargicevich · Julian Gargicevich (Nov 2025) ▶ 14:36)
• He didn’t do everything perfectly with Parakeet; mistakes are inevitable. (Jordan Rejaud · Jordan Rejaud (Apr 2026) ▶ 11:59)
• Even with successful apps you can’t guarantee success; you still have to go through the learning process. (presenter · Kyle Fowler (Jun 2026) ▶ 07:21)
• Not every flip succeeded: the doc/website generator was ‘not so successful’. (Domenico Gagliardi · Domenico Gagliardi (Oct 2025) ▶ 03:41)
• He admits struggling with emotional attachment himself and wasting years on a project without traction. (Loïc Berthelot · Loïc Berthelot (Nov 2025) ▶ 12:35)
• It was not all easy or predictable; he failed a lot. (presenter · How I Built A $1M Business Fro (Jan 2024) ▶ 08:29)

How much to trust this

• Evidence: 79 episodes, 75 independent speakers (repeat guests counted once; Pat and Gus counted as one voice).