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The 60 Second Podcast

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The 60 Second Podcast

Drew Allen - Chief Executive Officer, Grace Technologies

October 29, 2026 • Matt McCoy

0:00 | 1:31

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What if your biggest product failure turned into your greatest competitive advantage?

In this episode of The 60 Second Podcast, host Matt McCoy sits down with Drew Allen, CEO of Grace Technologies, to explore why embracing failure and running small experiments can lead to breakthrough innovations.

Drew shares a real-world example of a product development project that went terribly wrong when nearly every module failed during an initial factory deployment. Rather than letting the setback derail the project, his engineering team used the experience to uncover three major improvements: a redesigned data and power architecture, automated unit addressing, and enhanced network protection.

What initially seemed like a costly mistake ultimately resulted in a stronger product, a significant competitive advantage, and greater value for customers.

Drew's story is a powerful reminder that innovation doesn't always come from perfect planning. Sometimes, the most valuable breakthroughs happen when things go wrong.

Key Takeaways:

Why small experiments can outperform traditional strategic planning.
How early product failures can reveal opportunities for innovation.
The value of doing things that don't scale during product development.
How one failed deployment led to three major engineering breakthroughs.
Why leaders should embrace setbacks as opportunities to build better products.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, business leader, or product innovator, this conversation offers a practical lesson in turning failure into long-term success.

Tune in to The 60 Second Podcast for more insights from leaders shaping the future of business and innovation.

[00:00] Matt McCoy (Host):

You often talk about failing forward and running small experiments instead of relying on traditional strategic plans. Can you share an experiment that unexpectedly led to a major breakthrough for a company?

[00:11] Drew Allen:

Freshest one in my mind is last year we started a new product development effort. We rushed and we were working on getting the product tested and yada, yada, yada.

So of course, there's a customer who needs an install a little bit ahead of our initial timeline. So we go ahead and we rush, we hand-build all the boards in-house, which it's really good to do things that don't scale initially because you learn a lot.

[00:39] Drew Allen:

So we build up the boards, we go through, we actually kind of do an initial deployment in our factory before we go out on the customer site.

We blow up every one of our modules except for one of our modules in that initial deployment. And so our engineering team is like,

[00:54] Drew Allen:

"Oh, no."

Well, it led to three significant breakthroughs on the product.

[00:59] Drew Allen:

One, it led to a completely new data and power architecture on the units, which really gives us a massive competitive advantage in the market.

Second, it allows us to automatically address all the units so we don't have to do it manually.

And three, it added an additional protection that if there was a module to fail at any point in the field, we can protect the rest of the network.

I think that that's a great example of at the time it was extreme pain, but it's led to extreme benefit, not just for our company, but also for our customers, and led to a much better product effort.

People on this episode

Matt McCoy

Host

Drew Allen

Guest