Ep 299 | Big Tech's Biggest Failures and What We Can Learn

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to talk with you a little bit about failure. That's of course, uh, a topic we cover quite a bit here at No Days Off, because if you're an entrepreneur, if you're looking to build a big career If you're looking to really do anything in life, the reality is you're going to fail. The best of the best learn from those failures. And who else to look at when we're talking about best of best and failures than some of big tech's biggest players? Today I want to talk about Amazon, I want to talk about Google, and of course we're going to cover Facebook/Meta. We all know these companies to be insanely successful ones. Bezos and, and, and the guys over at Google and Zuckerberg. I mean, you've got some of the most brilliant individuals that for years of their life, they've dedicated their lives to building these absolutely amazing companies worth billions, even trillions of dollars in combination. They've done things that this world has never seen before. They've accomplished things that this world could have never ever anticipated. But what you may not know is that along the way, and it probably comes as no surprise, they had some really, really big failures. Let's talk about Amazon. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but Amazon had what they called the Fire Phone. In 2014, Amazon had an attempt, or made an attempt, to break into the smartphone market. Well, here we are in 2024. You probably don't know anybody with a Fire Phone. So as you can probably guess, that effort was a pretty big failure. The Fire Phone was way overpriced. It had limited app ecosystem. It had all sorts of overreliance on Amazon's services. And as a result, the company had to write down $170 million. Had to take a loss of $170 million and discontinued that product after just over a year on the market. Amazon also had, uh, something called Amazon Destinations. It was a whole— a hotel booking service, and their intention was to go and compete with Expedia, but it never attracted user interest. It never picked up market share. The service was shut down literally 6 months after its launch. I'm gonna guess you've never booked anything on Amazon Destinations. Google, one of the most amazing companies. I bet you know about this failure, Google+. If you've operated on Gmail or any Google services for some time, you probably remember Google+. As a matter of fact, it was an effort that they had going for 8, 9 years. I think it was 2011 to 2019. It was really a social network, a social networking platform And their intention was to rival Facebook. There was some initial interest, but it had persistent issues with user engagement. It had privacy breaches. It was shut down because no one was using it. It was also shut down because there was some security concerns. So, Google+ was 8 years, but never, never got off the ground. It really never took hold. How about Google Glass? Maybe you remember Google Glass, 2013 to 2015. What was Google Glass? It was their augmented reality smart glasses, and their intention was to attract consumers but also attract enterprise users. But it cost way too much. There was privacy concerns. It had limited actual, like, practical application, and it was a complete failure. The consumer version was shut down, and there was still development for the enterprise use. But I'm not quite sure where that's at here we are 10 years later. I mentioned Facebook. Facebook, maybe you remember Facebook had Facebook Deals. It only lasted about a year, but their intention was to take on Groupon and offer these time-limited deals. And it failed to stand out. It could not overtake Groupon. It was shut down 4 months after its launch because no one cared about it. They also had Facebook Home, which was a user interface layer for Android phones designed to make Facebook the, the core experience of the phone, and it was poorly received because its design was described as intrusive. It lacked appeal beyond Facebook's core functionality, and it was discontinued because no one cared about it. So 3 of the most successful companies in history, had some massive, massive failures. Of course though, from these failures were tremendous learnings. Let's Google Google+. Google+, remember, couldn't get user engagement, had privacy issues. It led to its shutdown. Now, despite this failure though, there were elements of Google+ that were integrated into other Google services, such as Google Photos and Google Hangouts, which is now Google Meet. Which many of you are probably familiar with. If you're not using Zoom, odds are you were on Hangouts or you're using Google Meet now. So the failure of Google+ led to the buildup in other services— Google Photos, Google Meet. Google Meet benefited from the social and sharing features that were originally developed for Google+. These other companies— I'm sorry, these other projects though, there were learnings galore. And we could go on and on and on, but the big takeaway, what I want everyone to understand, is that while these failures were setbacks at the time, they did provide valuable lessons. And they did, at least for these companies, provide technological advancements that contributed to future successes. They had to iterate, they had to keep trying, they had to keep failing, but trying and failing and learning, these are all hallmark, you know, the hallmark of innovation, especially in the tech industry. What do we take away from all this? I think there's— I think there's a handful of learnings, but number one, embrace risk and failure. Like, you gotta embrace it if you're gonna really want to innovate. You're, you're not going to knock it out of the park all of the time. Hopefully some of them hit, but a lot of them won't. Innovation requires taking some risks, sometimes significant, and failure is just a natural part of this process. So, like the Amazon Fire Phone and Google Glass, they were, they were bold attempts to enter in the new markets and they failed. But at least there was a willingness to take this risk. Number 2, if embrace risk and failures, number 1, number 2, you got to learn and pivot quickly. You got to have quick recognition of failure. Don't let ego get in the way. Once you recognize failure, you got to pivot, you got to pivot pretty efficiently, pretty quickly, so that you can save resources and so you're ready for the next big opportunity. We see Amazon do this. When Amazon had this auction platform that failed, I didn't mention that earlier, they had an auction platform that failed, but it ultimately led to the creation of Amazon Marketplace because of their willingness to learn and pivot. Number 3, You've got to think about simplicity and clarity. Overly complex products can confuse users and can hinder adoption. Within your own world, I'm going to challenge you in that I'm gonna bet there's some things that are just too darn complex. You've made them too complex. Simplicity and clarity are a must. You have to have a user-friendly experience or an interface And that's what we saw with things again pointing at Google. Google had all sorts of efforts before it landed at Google Drive, which many of you use, and Google Drive is arguably one of the best user-friendly experiences or interfaces out there. So the importance of clarity and the ease of use is amazingly important. Lastly, and again, there's so many different things we can learn. The last one that really matters to me for sake of this conversation today It's not one we think about a ton, but it's one we probably should give some more focus around. And that's just market fit and timing. What can we learn from this in terms of market fit and timing? Even good ideas, great ideas can fail if they're not launched at the right time or if they don't fit the market well at this very moment. Amazon has had many a product, Amazon Local, that was pretty sound in the concept, but it failed because it was poor market fit and the timing was poor. Google Health. Google had a health program or product out. Same sort of thing. Poor market fit, poor timing. Success oftentimes depends on launching the right product or launching the right service at the right moment. So the focusing question for, for you today. You are going to fail. There's no question about it, you're going to fail. If you don't fail, I would contend it's because you're not pushing hard enough, you're not innovating enough, you're not trying new things to reach your clients or provide for a better experience. You will in fact fail. Now, your ability though to grow from that failure, you know, take on that risk, embrace the risk knowing what's to come, learn and pivot quickly. Provide some simplicity and clarity, and then make sure that market fit and timing are there. You got to be aware of all these things. Now, again, back to the focusing question: where is this showing up for you right now? If you're pushing, as I'm assuming you are, otherwise you wouldn't be listening to our podcast, and you're seeing some failure, how are you going to— or should you be pivoting right now? Should you be trying to simplify? Should you be aiming to create more clarity? Or do you actually have a market fit and timing issue where you should potentially abandon ship and focus those— that energy and those resources elsewhere? A lot to think around here, a lot to think around. But again, as hard-charging, business-building entrepreneurs that are listening to the No Days Off podcast, you are faced with this. It's what you do with these failures, how you learn and grow from them, that make all the difference. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.