8 Main Reasons Why Startups Fail
Is there any secret of making the startup an instant success? Probably yes, but anyway some of the
main decisions are made using the trial and error method. There are some reasons though why so many startups fail without achieving what they wanted to. So, if you want to succeed one day with your idea, it’s a good reason to avoid them.
1. No market for your idea or product. The goods you’re going to offer can be innovative and very creative, but if there’s no wide market for it, it probably won’t work. The same is likely to happen if you offer something the market is not yet ready for. If the target audience is very small and you position yourself as a niche business, you have less chances for success than the startup targeted at satisfying everyone’s needs.
2. No proper preliminary research. If you haven’t determined what exactly and for whom you are going to offer, much likely you’re going nowhere. The other result of the lack of research is that you can turn out to be the eighth startup with the same product and niche. And the investors are not willing to invest in business like this.
3. No focus at all. Of course, if your target audience consists of small group of individuals in one town, then it’s hard to achieve a big success. But it’s even harder if you want to satisfy everyone’s needs at one time. Trying to do a little of everything leads to the situation when you’re not doing anything concrete and worthful to pay for. So, even you want to create something mass-market, determine your target audience as precisely as you can.
4. Lack of persistence. It’s important to realize that the startup success can take months or even years, and you’ll need the readiness to work for a long time without the visible results. What is more, a large proportion of startups succeed not with the product or services they planned to offer at the early stages. That leads us to another reason –
5. Lack of flexibility. Leading the startup differs from big traditional business mostly by its readiness to change and adopt to the fast-changing environment. So, if you anticipate that your idea is not going to work but you occassionally came across the new one that looks more convenient and promising, don’t keep up with the old one. Be open to new ideas; sometimes the market itself shows us what will work.
6. You only rely on your own and have no mentors. The mentors are someone who is ready to share their precious experience and prevent you from the mistakes the beginners often make. Having someone who faced the similar problems with the past and knows how to cope with them can save you a lot of time and shorten your road to success.
7. No exact plan to ROI. If you ask money from investors, you need to remember that they expect to return ten times more money than they have given. And you need to identify and explicate the reasons and your road to getting this money.
8. Poor management. Be extremely cautious with people you hire. Strong management team can increase your chances at success even in case of non-friendly environment while the bad one can spoil everything. It’s the management that determines if your business will operate as a harmonious mechanism.
Paul Smith
Latest posts by Paul Smith (see all)
- 8 Main Reasons Why Startups Fail - February 6, 2014
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