Design, Iterate, Fail, Repeat: Maximus Yaney’s Advice on the Innovation Process


The word “failure” is taboo in much of the corporate world. People don’t even want to discuss it as a possibility. As a result, many of the largest corporations lose an edge in innovation. Their people are scared to fail, so they don’t take any chances.

Entrepreneur Maximus Yaney has a different attitude towards failure. While the Founder and CEO obviously would not want to fail for the sake of it, Max Yaney views failure as an important part of the process of innovation. When you move on from the idea of failure being the ultimate sin, it frees you to be a little more daring. You try new ideas when others might be reluctant.

Maximus Yaney has been the founder and CEO of more than one company. For the entrepreneur, innovation follows the cycle of design, iterate, fail, repeat. Each step plays a key role in developing better products, and failing happens to be one of the most important steps.

About Maximus Yaney

Maximus Yaney is an innovator, inventor and serial entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of Kangaroo Security. Kangaroo is a company that strives to develop innovative home security products that are also affordable.

Along with being the founder of Kangaroo Security, Yaney has also been a part of founding several other companies. One example is Titan Aerospace, a company that designs high-altitude solar-powered drones. The company was later sold to Google in 2014.

The Kangaroo Security CEO attributes much of his success to the fact that he is not afraid to try something and fail. If he had listened to conventional wisdom and been wary of pursuing something new, Titan Aerospace never would have achieved results that attracted the attention of companies like Google.


If you are trying to do something that is cutting edge, you need to design and then design again. You not only have to count on your prior experience to guide you, but you need to be creative, determined and willing to think outside the box. You need to understand the function you want the product to serve when it is done and be aware of what customers or users will want from the product.


Don’t just iterate, do it rapidly and with as many iterations as is practical. You can’t spend all your time and money trying to work out the perfect solution for everything the first time. With several iterations, you can experiment and try different ideas. Some of these iterations might never make it outside the lab, but they can teach you a lot about what will work and what won’t. With rapid iteration, you will move closer to a better product or service faster than you would by trying to nail down the perfect solution for everything the first time.


Failing is an inevitable step when you are trying to do something that is truly innovative. The key is to learn from your failures. If you insist on only testing solutions you know will work the first time, your progress is going to be excruciatingly slow. By giving yourself the freedom to try and fail, you will learn more and make faster progress. That is why you want to iterate rapidly. Each iteration is a step toward your goal and an opportunity to learn new things.


The name of this step speaks for itself. Don’t be satisfied that you had great results with the first run-through of the development process. Continue to redesign products, make more iterations and look for new opportunities to push your limits without being afraid to fail.

For Kangaroo CEO Maximus Yaney, accepting failure is just a part of being innovative. As long as you are finding lessons in the failures, it is progress. If you never fail, it just shows that you are not being bold enough with your ideas and your willingness to experiment.

Follow the CEO and Founder on Maximus Yaney Twitter and Maximus Yaney Linkedin to find out more about his innovative ideas!

Kallen Kazz
the authorKallen Kazz