Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett has said he built Diary of a CEO into one of the world’s biggest podcasts by embracing failure as a competitive advantage.
The Social Chain co-founder, who moved to Los Angeles earlier this year, is determined to be known for testing ideas rapidly, learning fast and embracing mistakes as part of the process.
He has a dedicated “failure team”, led by a head of failure, whose goal is to increase the rate of experimentation, not the rate of success.
“We have a head of failure who leads that team… and her primary objective is to increase the rate of failure,” he explained in an interview with The Colin and Samir Show at Press Publish NYC.
“Notice I’m not saying the rate of success.
“You have to be less romantic about being right, and more romantic about winning.
“There should be nothing too small for an experiment. Sometimes when you look at small stones and turn them over, you find really big prizes.”
The entrepreneur’s team has spent the past year experimenting with AI-generated episodes, producing retention graphs that are now indistinguishable from human-hosted shows.
He added: “It took us about nine to 12 months to get to the point where if I showed you the retention graphs of two episodes – one human, one AI – you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
“Whether you know it or not, professionally as a creator you are being disrupted right now.
“The only outstanding question is whether it’s you disrupting yourself or someone else.”
He also shared the reasoning behind turning down massive offers, including one worth $100 million, describing it as a “happiness trade”.
He said: “In terms of the offer that we received, I think we can beat it on our own and without putting 12 ads into the podcast.
“We can beat it by putting two ads into the podcast with our own in-house commercial team.
“Fortunately, I come from a background where I was running businesses for the last 15 years, so I know how to build a team, run a commercial team.
“These partners have their own incentives and they move at their own speed. No one’s gonna let me have a f***ing failure and experimentation team in the old world. Because I’d have to explain myself to people.
“So, the old world is set up a certain way, and sometimes it can be a gravitational force.”
Watch the full interview below.