Failure-as-Default Framing to Create Startup Scarcity
Openly declaring a new bet will most likely fail buys the autonomy and speed a big company otherwise smothers
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 92%
In a resourced company the danger isn't starving — it's over-investment, where 'help' arrives with conditions that slow you down. Crusson's counterintuitive move is to repeatedly remind the whole org that the bet will most likely NOT exist in six months. That framing keeps other teams from imposing their scaling processes, design guidelines, and architecture standards on an unproven prototype, buying the team room to hack things together and test with customers fast — while also honestly protecting the company from over-committing resources to something unvalidated.
Origin
Tanguy Crusson's own principle from running Jira Product Discovery inside Atlassian's Point A incubator; he cites a self-invented '~70% chance it won't exist in six months' framing.
Core principles
- 01A resourced company's failure mode is over-investment, not scarcity
- 02Help always comes with conditions, and the condition is usually 'slow down'
- 03You must manufacture the urgency and scarcity a startup gets for free
- 04Being honest that it may fail also protects the company from over-committing a 50-person team to an unvalidated idea
How to run it
- 1
State the base rate out loud and often
Repeatedly tell stakeholders there's a high chance (he uses ~70%) the bet won't exist in six months. Make failure the expected, stated outcome rather than a taboo.
Pro tip Frame it externally to the org, not internally to your team — your team should still believe it can work; this is a shield against the org, not a demotivator.
Watch out Don't let the framing demoralize your own builders — for them the stance is 'we've got to make this work.'
- 2
Trade the framing for autonomy
Use the 'this probably won't survive' stance to justify skipping planning cycles, design-guideline conformance, and target-architecture fit. Rebuild components and test with customers next week instead of negotiating a platform service for six months.
Pro tip When a team pushes a standard process on you, ask: 'we might not exist in six months — do you really care that much about this process right now?'
Watch out This only works in a forgiving, psychologically-safe environment; in a heavily-regulated or unforgiving org it would backfire.
- 3
Graduate to 'proper business' rules only after validation
Once customers get value from the prototypes and the concept is proven, then declare it a real business and build it properly into the platform with the standards you skipped.
In the wild
By reminding everyone the product might not exist in six months, the team was allowed to build things that didn't scale, didn't respect design guidelines, and didn't fit Jira's target architecture — long enough to test whether the concepts and prototypes delivered value.
→ The team moved at startup speed inside Atlassian and validated the bet before committing to platform-grade rebuilds.
Common mistakes
Getting complacent that 'it's going to work'
Crusson says he'll die on the hill that failure is the most likely outcome, because he's repeatedly seen what happens when teams assume success is guaranteed — they over-invest and stop questioning, exactly the previous bets that struggled.
Is it for you?
Best for
A 0-to-1 leader inside a large company whose new bet keeps getting slowed by well-meaning process and 'help'
Not ideal for
Regulated or low-trust environments where openly declaring likely failure erodes the support you need
From the transcript
“reminding everyone that failure is the most likely outcome and I will die on that hill”
“otherwise the company has a tendency to overinvestment”
“the help always comes with condition and the condition is usually things slow down”
“we might not exist in six months do you really care that much about this process right now”
“I do not want to drag a team of 50 people into this I want to know that this thing is worth the investment”
From the episode
Hard-won lessons building 0 to 1 inside Atlassian
Tanguy Crusson (Head of Jira Product Discovery)