“Fail fast” is one of those startup mantras.

“Fail fast” is one of those startup mantras that sounds smart, until it isn’t.

I’ve seen teams fail fast.
And then fail again.
And again.
And again.

Not because the product was broken.
But because the thinking was.

In one case, a team I worked with tried to rapidly iterate on monetization features.
Every two weeks, a new offer, new layout, new pricing.
No segmentation. No goals. No understanding of player behavior.

Each version failed.
So they failed faster.

By the end of the quarter, they hadn’t learned much.
But they had definitely shipped 12 different failures.
And confused their players in the process.

But you should know:

🚫 Failing fast without a plan isn’t iteration — it’s noise.
🚫 Speed without clarity just gets you lost quicker.

If you want to fail fast and actually grow, here’s what to do:

✅ Set a clear hypothesis for what success looks like
✅ Track the right metric (not just revenue — try conversion rate, perceived value, retention uplift)
✅ Keep one variable per test
✅ Talk to users between failures
✅ Don’t just ship — reflect

Speed matters.
But direction is everything.

Fail fast — sure.
But learn faster.