The 7 Reasons Most Startups Fail

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Daily Muse co-founder Kathryn Minshew has failed and succeeded in several startups and she has the battle scars to prove it. Here are Kathryn's seven lessons learned from those experiences.

1. Idea vs. Product-market Fit: Failure to test and refine a product before launch. Therefore, founders should talk to people who don’t know and don’t care about their success, and to collect objective data as if it’s their only job.
2. Co-founders - Any Skill Will Do: Failure to think very carefully about the people who you will partner with. Therefore, one should define roles, agree on what happens if the company has trouble etc. (along with documenting those roles, duties and exit strategies).
3. Perfect vs. Done: Failure to disrupt the market with the best product they can produce. By the time a startup builds the best product, the company is dead. Therefore, it's essential to assemble a minimum viable product built around one core feature, and just launch it!
4. Productive vs. Impactful: Failure to accomplished things that move the startup towards achieving its most important metrics. Therefore, it is essential to define the most important metrics and the tasks necessary to be completed for the business to meet those metrics, and to devote enough time exclusively towards meeting those metrics.
5. Velocity: Failure to get people to notice the business. Therefore, it’s critical that every effort is made to get the company noticed because, it's really hard to kick-start the customer acquisition engine.
6. Team: Failure to look farther afield for great people (online communities etc.). Therefore, it's important to identify great people in alternatives places and people who are willing to work on opportunities they find meaningful.
7. Hype: Failure to 'not be tempted' to envy other companies that seem to be gaining traction faster. This is because most startups in their early days are train wrecks. Therefore, one must focus on doing the right things, and not worrying about the successes of others.

The Bottom Line: To escape startup failure on must; quickly launch and frequently iterate... 'an ugly baby is better than no baby at all'.

Watch Kathryn give examples and explain the: 7 Startup Mistakes

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The author has curated this video and has no affiliation with Katheryn Minshew.

 

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