Startup events usually celebrate successful exits, fundraising rounds and impressive growth numbers.
At Investment Boat 2026, Andrej Levin and Firaz Muinov, Co-CEOs of LD Parks, decided to talk about something founders experience far more often:
Things going wrong.
Their keynote, appropriately titled How to Learn From Your Fuckups, used a real development project to illustrate how mistakes can eventually create stronger companies.
When everything looks perfect
LD Parks originally grew from the real-estate brokerage business into development.
Their early projects progressed surprisingly smoothly.
Land was identified.
Economics worked.
Projects were sold.
The natural conclusion was seductive:
Development looks easy. Let’s do more of it.
Then came a project in Velké Pavlovice.
The location looked attractive. Market research supported the concept. Architects were hired. Retailers showed interest. Financing was arranged and the permitting process progressed.
After roughly two years of preparation, the project appeared close to realization.
Then the landowner changed course.
Despite the work LD Parks had already invested into the project, the contractual structure allowed the owner to withdraw, compensate the company according to agreed conditions and continue with the project independently.
For LD Parks, years of work and significant development costs suddenly became a lesson instead of a project.
Lesson 1: Do not spend profit before it exists
One of the easiest mistakes founders can make is psychologically spending future profit before the transaction is actually completed.
Once capital appears likely to arrive, it becomes tempting to treat it as if it already belongs to the company.
It doesn’t.
Until the transaction is completed and the money is secured, future profit remains theoretical.
Lesson 2: Investor money is not your money
The second principle was capital discipline.
When founders manage outside capital, they need to treat that money with even more care than their own.
Investor trust is built when management demonstrates that each decision is made with discipline rather than optimism.
Lesson 3: Diversification can save the company
LD Parks was able to absorb the failed project because it was not the only project the company was developing.
Returns and progress elsewhere helped compensate for losses.
That experience strengthened the company’s conviction that diversification is not merely an investment concept.
It is a survival mechanism.
Lesson 4: You are still the engine
Consultants, architects, lawyers and advisers can contribute enormously.
But none of them will care about the project in exactly the same way as the founders.
Especially when things go wrong, leadership cannot be outsourced.
The founder remains the person responsible for finding the way forward.
From one failure to a CZK 2.5 billion portfolio
LD Parks said its current portfolio represents approximately CZK 2.5 billion in projects across Czechia and Romania.
That growth did not happen because nothing went wrong.
It happened partly because things did go wrong — and the company changed how it approached risk, capital and development afterwards.
Their conclusion deserves to be remembered by founders far beyond real estate:
You will fall. That’s business. What matters is how you get back up.
