Sometimes the best things we can learn, we learn from people who failed. It's great to think about Google's 20% time, or Gimlet Media's 'Mix Week," - but that's not everything.
We can learn a lot of start-ups that failed.
After researching failed start-ups, I found 6 major ways that start-ups failed:
- They didn't understand their customers
- They managed money poorly.
- They didn't have the right strategy
- They lacked key skills
- They had bad luck.
- They had the wrong founding team.
Under these big areas were 28 ways that start-ups failed. Things like spending too much on marketing and talking to people who weren't customers plagued the postmortems I examined.
In their stories we find the little details, the nuggets that can help us. As Otto von Bismarck said, "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
Do that, here are 28 causes of death that any start-up can avoid.
We can learn a lot of start-ups that failed.
After researching failed start-ups, I found 6 major ways that start-ups failed:
- They didn't understand their customers
- They managed money poorly.
- They didn't have the right strategy
- They lacked key skills
- They had bad luck.
- They had the wrong founding team.
Under these big areas were 28 ways that start-ups failed. Things like spending too much on marketing and talking to people who weren't customers plagued the postmortems I examined.
In their stories we find the little details, the nuggets that can help us. As Otto von Bismarck said, "Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
Do that, here are 28 causes of death that any start-up can avoid.
