Why Startups Fail: Six Issues to Avoid

QIT IS TRUE that most startups fail. More than two-thirds of them never gave positive returns to investors.

Tim Eisenmann is a professor at Harvard Business School, where he leads The Entrepreneurial Manager, a required course for all their MBAs. While he teaches students how to create winning startups, he feels he’s not giving them the whole picture if he doesn’t know why so many fail. So, he began to search. The result is Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success.

Eisenmann introduced the Diamond-and-Square framework to help aspiring entrepreneurs find out if they know a graciousness opportunity and determine what kind of resources are needed to successfully exploit it.

the four diamond elements collectively specify the opportunities: what the business will offer and to whom; its plan for technology and operations; its marketing method; and how the business makes money.

• Customer Value Proposition: This is the most important. A new business must offer a sustainable differentiated solution for strong, unmet customer needs.

• Technology and Operations: A startup must be able to deliver on its value promise, which includes actually inventing the product, building the git, physically delivering it, and servicing it after it’s sold.

• Marketing: How much does marketing cost. Premature scaling of marketing and product development efforts is a common cause of startup failure.

• Income Formula: This is your plan to make money. The other three elements of a business opportunity dictate income and expenses.

To get this opportunity, the business must be right MEANS to the correct amount shown in the four outside “square” elements.

• Builders: The fit of the founder can have a decisive effect on the results of the business. Co-founder conflict can destroy a startup.

• team: If the other elements of the diamond-and-square structure are aligned, a weak group is unlikely to deal a death blow to the venture.

• Investors: Founders must decide when to raise money, how much to raise, and from whom. Mistakes here can have serious consequences.

• Partners: As with decisions about team members, bad choices about partners are rarely the primary cause of a startup’s demise. But they are more likely to increase the likelihood of failure by creating yet another serious problem for management to deal with.

It’s easy to blame the builders. Eisenmann is more profound and recognized six failure patternswatching businesses that initially showed promise but later crash to the ground due to mistakes that could have been avoided.

Most startup failures can be attributed to these six factors and can be divided three cases for early-stage failures and three cases for late stage failures. Eisenmann explains each using examples of startups that have fallen victim to these sources of failure.

Good Ideas, Bad Partners

People are the most common cause of failure. Although startup success is thought to be primarily due to the talents and instincts of the founder, the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a business very quickly.

Sometimes entrepreneurs recognize an attractive opportunity but fail to mobilize the resources necessary to exploit it. Disadvantages may include poor founder fit – due, for example, to conflict between cofounders or their lack of relevant experience; deficiencies of other team members; low value added by investors; and lack of alignment between the venture’s priorities and those of strategic partners.

Startups are more likely to be vulnerable to the Good Idea, Bad Bellows pattern of failure if they seek opportunities that include 1) complex operations that require close coordination of various specialist jobs; 2) inventory of physical goods; and 3) large, lumpy capital requirements.

False Start

Many early-stage startups fail after their founders rush their first product to market, skipping the initial research to determine whether they have identified strong, unmet customer needs. and the best solutions for problems. As a result, the first business product is likely to be off the mark. The entrepreneur can pivot, but they increase their failures by wasting time and money on a wrong first product.

Entrepreneurs can avoid false starts by performing a thorough and thoughtful design process before engineering work begins. Iteration should only stop when you are confident that you have created a compelling customer value proposition.

False Positive

Early adopters and early customers have different needs, and both should be tested. Crowdfunding campaigns can show the appeal of a product to enthusiasts in the product category, but they do not provide data on the demand of the majority of the market.

Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders undue confidence in expansion. The success of early adopters can be misleading and give founders undue confidence in expanding prematurely – or, if the needs of early customers differ from those of early adopters – heading in the wrong direction. Once the error is detected, the business can correct course, but pivots can be costly when resources are committed.

Speed Trap

Despite the pressure to “grow fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the best businesses. Hypergrowth can put enormous strains on a startup, and these strains can prove fatal if growth isn’t profitable — that is, if the marketing costs involved in acquiring a new customer exceed profit that the business can expect to make, over time, from the customer. .

To avoid you need to ask four categories of questions-called the Test of RAWI—to find out if you’re ready to succeed:

1. Ready? Does the startup have a proven business model?

2. Can do? Will the startup be able to access the resources needed to expand rapidly?

3. Want? Are the founders excited about growing the business?

4. Forced? Does the startup have aggressive rivals?

Looking for Help

Rapidly scaling startups require a lot of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that cause them to suddenly be in short supply of both.

In contrast to Speed Trap victims, some startups manage to maintain product-market fit as they scale but stumble due to shortages in management talent or capital – or both. Delays or mistakes in recruiting senior leaders for mission-critical roles can derail a business, as can sudden changes in investor sentiment that can eliminate access. of capital – even for healthy startups.

Running Miracles

The bigger the vision, the more challenges you face, and a deficiency in any one of them can be enough to kill the vision, thus requiring a cascade of miracles to succeed—a spill of the month. How much innovation?

Some entrepreneurs pursue daringly ambitious business concepts that require years of product development, combined with breakthroughs in many fields, for example: radical changes in customer behavior; the cooperation of established corporations that benefit from the status quo; government support in the form of subsidies or favorable regulations; or investors who are willing to commit large amounts of capital over long periods of time. If any of these requirements are not met, the business may fail. Because of this, the entrepreneur needs a cascade of miracles to succeed.

Dealing with Failure

Should you stop it? Failure is often a slow move, so it’s easy to get hung up on false hope. And there was a founder’s ego that took a hit. When you are faced with this decision, there are four questions you should ask yourself:

1. Aren’t you moving?

2. Are you miserable?

3. Do you still believe in the vision?

4. Does the window close for a “graceful” close?

Eisenmann covers how to shut down and how to bounce back. For those who want to try their hand at a new business, the good news is that for those who “preserve relationships with team members and investors by engineering a good closing, ” most do not experience any meaningful stigmatization or rejection. Take responsibility for failure and learn what you learn that can be applied to your next venture.

Eisenmann says it’s “an amazing ride, making something out of nothing. So go make something good.”

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