Too many founders tackle problems they believe others might want solutions to, or think can scale quickly, or simply feel cool. Yet Third, Many startups go broke because founderes simply do not want to work more for the startup. This is common because they never had a personal stake in the problem they were attempting to solve. It is always possible that a First time founders learned to love his product or problem later on. but starting with an intrinsic motivation can be quite essential.
Assisting Users Whom You Have No Interest In
An example from Justin. This is well demonstrated by the split between traditional TV and Twitch. The team was excited about democratizing live video but not the users who flocked to their platform. Twitch only started to flourish when Emmett Shear realigned the company around video games streaming. A community he was passionate about.
This idea is listed under Groundwork Principles. My caveat here was that you might want to include co-founders who at least proficiently fill in your own gaps, but the guy never told me about those. Its what they know you need, and I mean it when I say space.
As an exception to the rule, it is almost always a good idea for co-founders to have some prior acquaintance. That prior association, yours or a school project, friendship, etc. It helps lend confidence that you can work together and get through the difficult parts. Partnering with even a close friend is crazy, and the startup experience can be brutal.
First time founders Having Non-Transparent Conversations with Co-founders
Whereas the absence of conversation is such a huge problem. The most common subjects of drama are performance, goals, and roles. Well, most founding teams never even discuss these very sensitive issues and that just leads to frustration and thus bad blood. Structured and open dialogues are important to prevent any miscommunication or disputes.
Not Launching Early
Founders who are scared to launch: most do not feel competent enough to make a big splash. But for most users, launch day is not as big a deal as founders like to think it is. The point is — bring it to market as quickly as possible in the form of a minimum viable product (MVP) so that you can get feedback from customers. However, this does not hold true for many highly regulated markets such as banking where you cannot launch early. Well for most of the other startups, make a MVP in a month and get it out there is the best and achievable way to approach it.
Not Using Analytics
Not measuring your user engagement with your product Building a product includes understanding what is used and what is not. If you don t have analytics, then you are flying blind and unable to make informed decisions on what to improve and iterate upon.
Not knowing who your initial users will be
So many founders do not know where their first users will come from is shocking. You should know some people who suffer from the problem you chose to solve. The first few users you find should come from your network or people you have identified. Finding the first hundred or thousand users is a challenge in and of itself, but early adopters should be identifiable.
Poor Prioritization
Many new founders get distracted by non-core functions such as press, recruiting, conferences and investor relations vs focusing on actually building and iterating on their product. A startup’s real job is to ship the product, get it into people’s hands and iterate on it using their input. Don’t fall into the “cargo cult” startup, which tries to do everything a mature, successful startup does without doing the hard work.
Conclusion
Incubated rulesWhile there are always exceptions to these hundreds of startup failures, and a number of startups have gotten away despite doing all the things wrong above, eliminating this can definitively tilt your odds in favour of success. Keep the basics in mind: Work on things you care about, build for people you love, have awesome co-founders (very important), communicate early and often, ship it sooner than later, get analytics to hold yourself accountable, know your first users well (whoever they are), and learn how to prioritize.
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