Stop being afraid of failure and start embracing it.

FailCon is a one-day conference for technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers and designers to study their own and others' failures and prepare for success.

We all have founded, worked for or invested in startups that have failed. We're smart, we keep up with the latest in technology trends, but sometimes just don't go as planned. How can you predict what will work and what won't? Well, you can't.

But that doesn't mean you should stop trying. It just means you should start exchanging stories of what didn't work and how you pivoted, why you couldn't raise money, what the wrong hires were like, and when you decided it was time to let go. Entrepreneurs need to hear that from each other: that it's okay to fail, it doesn't mean you're worthless. You're just like the rest of us, learning from our making mistakes and building something bigger next time.

Our Story

FailCon was started in 2009 by Cass Phillipps, an event planner for startup events and failed founder herself. The event began growing to international audiences with FailCon France in 2011, and is now produced in over a dozen cities world wide. FailCon Europe will bring together teams from across Europe to unite the European entrepreneur community in a spirit of sharing lessons learned and helping one another succeed.

Who Are The FailCon Europe Producers?

Cass Phillipps, Executive Producer

Cassandra has been a startup event producer for over five years, producing and managing conferences like FailCon, SF MusicTech Summit, Inside Social Apps, Unleashed Conference, and many more. She works with clients to insure each has a high-quality and profitable event, connecting them with the best partners, sponsors, and speakers for their topics. Cassandra has a B.A in Human Development from the University of Chicago.

Roxanne Varza – Producer

Roxanne Varza

Originally from Silicon Valley, Roxanne graduated from UCLA and worked for the Invest in France Agency (AFII) for 2 years before moving to France in 2009 to pursue a joint masters degree at Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics in International Political Economics. During her master's program, she became the Editor of TechCrunch France and co-founded Girls in Tech Paris. Since then, she has worked for a few startups and also launched Girls in Tech in London. She is currently the communications director at Shopcade.com.

Andrew Scott, Producer

Andrew is a serial entrepreneur whose interests include writing and film. He began young, with a small IT consultancy with his college as his first client. Since he has had six start-ups and been involved in more, including a web development company (worldwidecity) which he sold, the world’s first online video news archive (BritishPathe), world’s first location based mobile social network (playtxt), personalization app then platform (Rummble Labs) and UnLtdWorld.com which was sold to The Guardian Media Group. Today Andrew mentors tech start-ups, occasionally writes, occasionally invests, is on the advisory board of MLOVE.com, is a co-founder of the European tech Founder’s group ICEList.eu and has set up an independent film company “Port 20 Productions” alongside consulting. Andrew splits his time between London and the U.S. West Coast.