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Entrepreneurship & Startups vocabulary · Pivots, Failure & Exits

Fail fast

Meaning in entrepreneurship & startups, with examples

phraseCommon term

In entrepreneurship & startups, fail fast means: The idea of testing ideas quickly and cheaply so that you find out early what does not work and can stop or change direction before wasting time and money.

In Turkish: hızlı başarısız ol, erken yanıl, çabuk öğren

How it is used

A popular saying in startups and tech companies, often in the form fail fast, learn fast. It does not mean that failure is the goal; it means getting quick feedback. People also say fail fast and fail cheap, or fail forward.

Example sentences

  1. We believe in failing fast, so every new feature starts as a two-week experiment.

  2. Fail fast: if nobody signs up in a month, drop the idea and test the next one.

Common collocations

  • fail fast, learn fast
  • fail fast and fail cheap
  • fail forward
  • culture of failing fast
  • pivotTo change a basic part of your business, such as the product, the customer group or the way you make money, because the original plan is not working.
  • lean startupA method of building a company by testing ideas quickly with real customers in a build, measure, learn cycle, instead of following a long, fixed plan.
  • validateTo check with real evidence, such as customer interviews, sign-ups or pre-orders, that an idea, a problem or a business assumption is true.
  • post-mortemA review done after a project, launch or company has ended, especially after a failure, to understand what went wrong and what can be learned.

More terms: Pivots, Failure & Exits

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