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Fail fast shouldn't mean fail always... 'Fail' in this context mostly means 'choose to use resources to do other things'. Alphabet has certainly learned a huge

Fail fast shouldn't mean fail always... 'Fail' in this context mostly means 'choose to use resources to do other things'. Alphabet has certainly learned a huge amount from all of these ventures, and that doesn't go away if they close them down. There'll be people at Alphabet looking for uses of what came out of these companies in the future. The point of Google X was to try projects that had very little chance of success but that would have been world-changing if they pulled it off. The probability of 'fail always' was always quite high. The same lesson applies to everyone. Your startup might fail but you take the learning and experience with you, and use it to do other things in the future. When you're setting goals there should be a reasonably high probability of failing because otherwise you're just not aiming high enough.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> There'll be people at Alphabet looking for uses of what came out of these companies in the future Do you have any evidence for this? Because at a certain point, the framework almost defines failure out of existence. Which is very much in line with X’s philosophy.
modeless 2y ago
> Alphabet has certainly learned a huge amount from all of these ventures, and that doesn't go away if they close them down. This is a fantasy, and I know first hand. I worked for a startup that was acquired by Google. They shut us down after a year. I am here to tell you that they "learned" absolutely nothing. The archived technology was never touched. Years later there were multiple teams doing stuff redundant to what we did. They didn't know we ever existed and their projects will probably never be released.
- erickj 2y ago
  > The archived technology was never touched. Years later there were multiple teams doing stuff redundant to what we did. They didn't know we ever existed and their projects will probably never be released. I've worked there for 12 years and this is 100% accurate. It's all one big director and vp level circle jerk.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> There'll be people at Alphabet looking for uses of what came out of these companies in the future Do you have any evidence for this? Because at a certain point, the framework almost defines failure out of existence. Which is very much in line with X’s philosophy.

modeless 2y ago

> Alphabet has certainly learned a huge amount from all of these ventures, and that doesn't go away if they close them down. This is a fantasy, and I know first hand. I worked for a startup that was acquired by Google. They shut us down after a year. I am here to tell you that they "learned" absolutely nothing. The archived technology was never touched. Years later there were multiple teams doing stuff redundant to what we did. They didn't know we ever existed and their projects will probably never be released.

erickj 2y ago
> The archived technology was never touched. Years later there were multiple teams doing stuff redundant to what we did. They didn't know we ever existed and their projects will probably never be released. I've worked there for 12 years and this is 100% accurate. It's all one big director and vp level circle jerk.