Every Friday, someone at Steven Bartlett’s company wins an unusual trophy: for failing the most. At Amsterdam Business Forum 2026, he explains why, with five insights on building a company where people want to try, grow, and contribute.
“The greatest risk in your organizations in this moment of change is no risk.”
Entrepreneur, investor, and host of The Diary of a CEO, Europe’s #1 podcast, Steven Bartlett closes the last block of the day, about building human-centered organizations. At 18, he dropped out of university after one lecture. By his mid-twenties, he had some 500 employees and was co-CEO of a public company.
In conversation with host Ikenna Azuike, Steven shares the three principles behind his success: “Experimentation, 1%, and then an obsessive focus on the fact that you’re a recruitment company.” The rest of the conversation and a question from the audience bring two more insights.
“I didn’t say I reward success. I didn’t say I reward the output. I said I reward them trying.”
The right answers in marketing, sales, and HR are changing faster than ever. The company that learns fastest wins, and that takes experiments. So Steven’s company has a head of failure and a failure team, measured on how much they fail. There’s also a Slack channel for experiments, and even the barista at the London HQ uses it. She posts a hypothesis: a matcha latte will outsell the flat white. She controls the variables and shares the result with the entire company. It doesn’t work. She still gets 45 fire emojis. Nobody knows in advance which experiment will work. That’s why Steven rewards the one thing people can control: did you try?
Concrete lesson for you: Ask your team to share one experiment this week, with a hypothesis and a result. Applaud every attempt, including the ones that fail.
“If you scale down the size of the goal, you scale up the motivation.”
A goal like “build the biggest podcast in the world” sounds inspiring. But wins that big are so rare, Steven says, that chasing them demoralizes a team. That’s where his second principle comes in: 1%, an obsession with the smallest possible things. For example, one team member changes the air freshener in the studio. She posts it on Slack, and everyone claps. When a guest walks in, the first thing he mentions is the smell. Steven can see some people in the room thinking that is petty. “Nothing is too petty,” he says. Your competitors will think a detail like this is pathetic, “so they won’t do it. And that is the unbelievable advantage.”
Concrete lesson for you: Cut your biggest goal into pieces your team can finish this week. Then make every finished piece visible, and clap for it.
“Every company in this room is a recruitment company, first and foremost. Some don’t realize that’s their first priority.”
At 19, Steven spent two hours a week on recruitment. Today, he spends 30. He sees the same curve in great founders: hiring starts as an afterthought and ends up filling the calendar. After all, a company is a group of people, and every idea it has starts in one human brain. So Steven does the courting himself. He meets Ada, then at Amazon, in January. In February, she says no. He keeps going. In April, she says yes. Today, she is his CTO. As he tells the room: “I’m head of recruitment. In fact, you all are.”
Concrete lesson for you: Count the hours you spent last week finding and courting people. Then block that time in your calendar the way you block revenue work.
“The day when I got most scared … was the day we became successful.”
When Steven realizes his podcast is about to overtake the biggest podcaster in the world, he gets scared. Because once you have something, you start defending it. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that if you drop €10, you would have to find €20 to make up for the pain. The more successful a company gets, the more careful it becomes. That is why Steven’s failure team reports directly to him. Otherwise, “some kid in their bedroom with nothing to lose is gonna kill us.”
Moments like that are why Steven writes essays to his team about reinvention. The one from three weeks before Amsterdam tells the story of an American shot putter, the greatest of all time. He wins two Olympic gold medals with the usual technique. Then he takes three years off, goes back to a blank canvas, and invents a completely different throw. At first, it is terrible. Then he breaks the world record again and wins the next gold medal.
Concrete lesson for you: After your next milestone, ask your team one question: what would a kid in a bedroom with nothing to lose build to beat us?
“I think the most important thing that I’ve learned is how you say goodbye.”
When the first person left his first company, Steven got angry and complained about it to the team. He regretted it. Today, he often starts the goodbye himself, with candor and honesty. One young woman called him back a week after such a talk: she agrees it is time, asks him to be quiet for a second, and reads him a letter she has written to thank him. His reply: “I’m no longer your employer, I’m your friend.” This approach, Steven says, creates positive disciples in the world. As he puts it: “People are here for a season, a reason, and some people are here for a lifetime. Most people are here for a season. And that’s okay.”
Concrete lesson for you: Don’t wait for a resignation letter to talk about someone’s future. If you sense a team member has outgrown their role, raise it yourself, early and honestly.
Steven ends with a story about expectations. The first time he flies (apart from leaving Africa as a baby), he is 21. Economy class, on his way to Thailand, reading the safety manual. Mind blown. Five years later, he sits in first class, annoyed because the flight attendant takes his laptop off him. He looks over and sees a woman he calls Janet, on her honeymoon with Dave. Sipping champagne, she says: “Dave, they’ve got caviar.” Same plane. Same destination. But she is having the time of her life.
Happiness, Steven learned from one of his guests, depends on whether life meets your expectations. Thirteen years ago, he was shoplifting pizzas. Now he stands on a stage in Amsterdam. Just saying it fills him with gratitude. And the lanyard around your neck, with your name and job title? “Once upon a time, that was the dream.”
“This is the dream. Enjoy it.”
Ready to put Steven’s lessons to work? Start here.