Thursday 28 May 2026 2:37 pm
At SCALE EXPO & SUMMIT on 22 April, business journalist Dougal Shaw brought together three entrepreneurs to talk about setbacks and comebacks – the theme of his new book, Fail Smarter.Failure is not something most of us talk about at business events. When you’re pitching to investors, winning over customers, or convincing talented people to join your startup, the success narrative is everything. But according to Dougal Shaw, keeping our mouths firmly shut about failure is a problem, and it’s costing British businesses their best chance to scale.At SCALE’s flagship event at the Business Design Centre, Dougal chaired a panel that cut straight through the shiny surface of entrepreneurship to examine what failure really looks like, and what the most resilient founders do with it. Joining him were Steph Hind, co-founder of employee wellbeing benefits platform Heka; Gurinder Dhillon, founder and CEO of electric vehicle leasing company Auto Car; and John Stapleton, serial food entrepreneur and investor, founder of New Covent Garden Soup Company and Little Dish. Four lessons in turning setbacks into breakthroughs1. When everything closes overnightSteph Hind closed her first investment round the week before Christmas 2019. Six weeks later, Covid hit. Heka’s entire model at the time was built around physical health and wellness experiences (gyms, yoga studios, sports classes) all of which shut down simultaneously.“Every gym, every physical location we had on the platform closed,” she said. “And literally overnight you had people being like, what are you going to do for us now?”Steph was 26, recently in her first office, with new staff who had joined on the strength of her conviction. The pressure was acute.
