Why Startups Fail: An Analysis of Post-Mortems | Hacker News Reader

Why Startups Fail: An Analysis of Post-Mortems

foundersblock.com

22 pointsmayava7 comments

#1 reason: Not listening to your customers.

That's interesting because I think that is a psychological problem more than anything else.

Getting your product or service in front of a 3rd party (not your mother or buddy) is scary for many people...myself included!

Very true, but there's a difference between showing your customers a product and not listening to them. I agree that the first step is pretty scary, esp if you're an introverted engineer who'd rather hide in a cave and code, but the main problem seems to be that when founders do solicit feedback, they'll hear what they want to hear, i.e. focus on the positive feedback and underweigh the negative. This supports a continued delusion that their product is as loved by others as it is by them.

So how do you combat that?

A few ideas: show your product to a diverse base of customers to avoid any super-techy or early adopter biases (unless, of course, your product is mostly for them), quantify the findings, and be systematic about improvements. If there are issues in areas outside your expertise, such as marketing or UX, find professionals you respect who can advise you. Also useful to set metrics beforehand for what you consider success/failure, i.e. # of customers acquired within a certain timeframe, customer growth rate, engagement, etc.

Blogspam, original article at http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/top-reasons-startups-fail-an...

An analysis of post-mortems, which are themselves a kind of analysis? Shall we all give our analysis of this?

I immediately thought of the Sieve of Eratosthenes.

Starting at the left of the image, you will see what is most likely to kill your startup. Go to each item in turn, and check to see if you are handling the situation correctly. If you get yourself a clean bill of health then your startup is "Prime" and likely to succeed.

If you run afoul of one or more of these items, then you need to work on some things...

I don't really want to talk in depth about how many items I feel I need to work on, but it makes me think about factorials instead of primes.

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