Dress for the slide

BMW engineers the R 1300 GS to crash: factory crash bars and cylinder head guards absorb the impact so the chassis stays true and the bike rides again. Riders have a saying for the same idea — dress for the slide, not the ride.

The talk applies that to building products. Missing your projections isn't an anomaly, it's the base rate: 70% of people miss their own deadlines, ~75% of VC-backed startups never return capital, and 9 out of 10 experiments fail at Google, Microsoft, Airbnb, Meta and Netflix. Since falling is the process, not the verdict, the useful question is what gear you're wearing when it happens — helmet (mindset: falls are training data, and AI has made each lap cheap), gloves (people, invested in before you need them), armor (health), boots (instruments: kill criteria, pre-mortems, cheap tests). The one thing to take home: detach yourself from your idea and focus on a problem. If you try, failure is probable; if you don't, regret is certain.

Takeawys

Falling is the base rate, not the verdict. 70% miss their own deadlines, ~75% of VC-backed startups never return capital, 9 in 10 experiments fail at the best companies. Plan for it and always adjust the runway.

Dress for the slide. Gear up before you go down — mindset (falls are training data), people (invested in before you need them), health, and instruments (kill criteria, pre-mortems, cheap tests).

Detach yourself from your idea; focus on a problem. Attempt #1 not working is not the end of the story. If you try, failure is probable; if you don't, regret is certain.

Speaker:
Product leader with 16 years in product, 9 of them in Head of Product roles across fintech, retail, and telecom. Focuses on digital transformation and AI automation of operational routines.

Owned 30+ end-to-end product lifecycles, defining strategy and vision, leading discovery and delivery, and measuring post-launch impact. Managed product, growth, marketing, design, and data teams.