A curated evening for humans in tech — real stories, honest lessons, and the connections worth making. Built on truth over performance.
Failing Forward is a monthly evening in Lisbon where remarkable humans in tech take the stage — not to perform success, but to share the full picture. The pivots, the wrong bets, the things that broke before they worked.
It's a deliberately designed space: one strong story, a room full of curious people, and enough time to actually talk. We keep it small so everyone leaves having had at least one real conversation.
Whether you're a founder, engineer, product manager, or researcher — if you build things with technology and you're curious about how others do it, this is your room.
Just real journeys, real failures, real lessons.
Invite-only, curated audience. Everyone there has a reason to be.
Mystery recruiters, collaborations, introductions — born in the room, not on a job board.
Live polls, roundtables, speed connections. Nobody hides in the corner.
One speaker. One story. Real, specific, and unfiltered. What they built, what broke, and what they'd do differently.
Live polls, lightning insights, roundtables. What people really think, in real time.
A surprise drop — jobs, gigs, and opportunities.
Five-minute rounds. Three to five connections you actually wanted to make.
Guided prompts, small groups. No "so what do you do?"
The round that makes the evening. Quick, honest, and it cuts through the noise. Small tables, one deck of prompt cards. Draw a card, answer it honestly, pass it on: the card facilitates, so the conversation skips small talk and goes straight to the real stories.
It feels like compressed intimacy: sharp exchanges, no masks. By the end, the room is alive and you leave with real connections.
The version of me that never made it onto LinkedIn …
A small table, a handful of people you haven't met yet. No pitch, no job titles up front.
The card sets the question and does the facilitating. Everyone answers, nobody falls back on "so what do you do?"
One honest answer sparks the next. You leave the table knowing people, not just names, and the follow-ups start there.
Come for the story, stay for the conversation.
Tech isn't one job title. Everyone in the room shapes technology from a different seat, and it all boils down to three overarching categories.
The people who make the thing: engineers, designers, researchers, founders. They decide what gets built and what gets left out.
The people who put it into the world: product and operations leads, managers, policy and procurement, anyone choosing where a tool lands and who it touches.
The people who live with it every day. Their experience is the real test of whether any of it worked.
Honest, curious, open-minded and mindful humans — all identities, all ages, all cultural backgrounds across the spectrum.
Failing Forward began in Lisbon in July 2026, co-launched with AIP. Every month since: a different room, a different story, the same rules. Lisbon is our home chapter and the blueprint for every city that follows.
An evening of failing forward, fierce confidence, and selling like you actually mean it
Featuring Mafalda Johannsen (Published Author, Director of Commercial Strategy at N.Rich — "the Strutter") and Zez Vaz (Award-Winning Cartoonist, Animator & Director — "the Satirist"). Come for the story, stay for the conversation.
Showing up online with clarity.
Coverage of the launch, with founders Melissa Carvalho and Hayarpi Antonyan and AIP's Marta Barbosa Cabral on fear, silence, and learning from failure in Portugal's innovation ecosystem.
Read the article →Announcement of the monthly series and its inaugural session, "Connecting the Dots," with speakers Isabel Carapeta and Patrícia Pires.
Read the article →Every edition happens because someone opens a door. These are the organisations that have hosted, programmed and backed Failing Forward in Lisbon.
Co-launched the series with us and hosted our first three editions at Praça das Indústrias.
aip.pt →Brought Failing Forward into its 2026 programme: honest stories inside a festival about creating value for the public.
publicvalue.pt →Lisbon’s hub for social innovation and impact entrepreneurship, and the home of our fifth edition.
casadoimpacto.scml.pt →
EU Attorney and certified AI Governance Professional. Melissa translates complex regulation into human language — and brings that same clarity to the conversations she curates.
Strategy and PMO lead with six years across startups and corporates in Europe. Arpi brings the structure that makes things actually happen — and the international perspective that makes them interesting.
Failing Forward runs on community energy. Whether you want to speak, sponsor, suggest someone, or simply show up and be part of the room — there's a meaningful role for you.
We're deliberately lean: no ad spend, no agency, no corporate gloss. Everything that works here works because real people made it work.
You don't need to have made it to belong on stage. You need a real story — something you built, broke, or learned the hard way. No keynote experience required.
We work with one sponsor per event — the Mystery Recruiter Partner. Exclusive access, real conversations, and genuine talent connections rather than a logo on a slide deck.
We rely on community recommendations to find speakers who wouldn't normally put themselves forward. Know someone with a real story? Send them our way.
Have a space in Lisbon that could host 30–40 people for an evening? We'd love to hear from you. Venues become part of the experience — always a good one.
Fill in the form and one of the organizers will get back to you personally. We read everything.