Amazon's devices chief, Panos Panay, had a blunt message for startup founders at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco: failure is not just possible but necessary. Drawing on more than 19 years at Microsoft, Panay said the key is not avoiding failure but facing it, understanding what went wrong, and harvesting the lessons. He warned that founders who have never failed probably have not pushed hard enough.
Panay pointed to the launch of Microsoft's Surface RT, the company's first tablet, as a catastrophic failure that led to a nearly $1 billion write-down. He recalled being publicly labeled a failure in the press. The real problem, he said, was not the launch moment itself but a series of earlier decisions around incomplete software, inventory, and retail strategy. Admitting failure was easy, he said; the harder part was learning from it.
His advice to founders is to hold onto the original vision while making small corrections. "Usually it's just 30 degrees," he said, describing how lessons should shift direction rather than force a complete pivot. He also cautioned against hanging on too long, arguing that people who do so have often never truly accepted the failure in the first place. The source for this article is a single TechCrunch report of Panay's onstage remarks.