Keynotes and the Fuckup Nights format for conferences and external events.
For organisers who want an hour in the programme that is still being mentioned three years later.
Whether something real happens.
The difference between a good conference slot and one that nobody forgets: the moment polish is traded for genuine honesty.
Our work on stage rests on more than ten years with failure stories — as hosts and as keynote speakers. We know how a room opens up when someone stops performing and starts telling.
Failure culture, courage and innovation — compelling, precise, hard to forget.
A good keynote changes how people think about a subject afterwards. Not only for the moment of applause, but for the Monday after, when the first difficult decision arrives.
Dejan’s keynotes are not motivational speeches. They are uncomfortable, concrete and entertaining — because the subject demands it. Failure is not a soft topic. It is the hardest leadership topic there is, and one most organisations have yet to address seriously.
Why failure is where progress begins, and what organisations have to do in concrete terms so that this does not remain an empty phrase.
On the difference between a culture of avoiding failure and a genuine capacity to learn. And what the former costs.
Dejan’s own story: lawyer, startup founder, Silicon Valley, failed, started again — and how that became a method that works inside organisations.
Not a single talk, but a format that changes the room.
Three to four speakers each tell one personal failure story — short, direct, without a barrage of slides. Dejan hosts: he takes the stories deeper, connects the individual perspectives into a whole, and turns a slot in the programme into a moment the audience takes home.
The format invites the audience in. Not as passive listeners, but as people who recognise themselves in what they hear. Because every story told touches the unspoken one of your own.
How we work together: we agree the subject and the audience with you. Dejan helps to select and brief the speakers — external, from your own network, or a mix. The preparation is part of the format, not an add-on.
Would you like to celebrate failure culture with us at your conference or event?
Write to us with the date, a rough idea of the audience and what you have in mind. We will look together at whether and how it fits.
Do you know our Fuckup Nights?
The public Fuckup Nights are the spark — here we turn it into measurable cultural change. Two rooms, one house.
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