Polish startup Brainly has come a long way since it raised a $500,000 seed round back in 2009. Then the company, which operates a ‘social learning network’ for students to help each other with schoolwork, boasted 7 million users per month, across 17 localised sites, who had answered 2 million questions in total.
We analyzed 101+ startup failure post-mortems to identify the top reasons startups fail. Here they are.
We dug into our compilation of startup failure post-mortems (currently 101 and growing) and analyzed each one to understand the reason(s) for startup failure. Yes, we read through 101 startup failure post-mortems and distilled down to the top 20 reasons.
There has been considerable hand wringing in recent months about research (pdf) showing a decline in American entrepreneurship, a fall in “economic dynamism” (the turnover of companies and jobs), and an overall aging of U.S. businesses. In the face of pessimistic long-term growth forecasts from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Federal Reserve, these findings are worrying.
Entrepreneurship is hard. REALLY hard. But with countless tales of how entrepreneurs made it big with almost nothing, it’s easy for a budding founder to jump into the startup world full of unbridled enthusiasm.
Luckily, Startup Misconceptions is here to clear up the myths, delusions, and fancies surrounding entrepreneurship, with useful advice from experts. So, sorry if we rain on your parade, but we believe a successful entrepreneur is a prepared entrepreneur. You’ll thank us later.
The world is awash in cool new tech startups and poised for “A Cambrian Moment”, according to a recent special report from the Economist. For those that haven’t read it, it’s a very interesting set of articles about the trends shaping venture formation in digital media and software: the ease of starting new companies, the proliferation of accelerators, better and more transparent markets for funding like that created by AngelList, the platformization of everything, etc…
What separates successful business owners from less successful ones?
What are the traits and behaviors that drive an individual to start, sustain, and grow a successful company?
Do entrepreneurial attitudes toward autonomy, risk, work, and income affect business outcomes?
Intrigued by these questions and many others, Gallup studied 2,500 entrepreneurs to understand the actions and decisions that lead to venture creation and growth. After years of research and hundreds of interviews, Gallup has identified 10 specific talents that drive business success -- 10 behaviors we consistently observed in highly successful entrepreneurs.
Businesspeople love to talk about building "entrepreneurial cultures." The very term evokes the excitement and success of Google, Apple, and Facebook. The problem is that large established companies are often lousy at actually being entrepreneurial. Need I remind you about New Coke? Or Crystal Pepsi? Or the Ford Edsel and other failed launches?
The very things that ensure a company's survival and success act as obstacles to entrepreneurship.
About 18 months ago I was in the middle of gathering evidence for my second report on small firms, “Growing your Business”, when I met the chief executive of the Association of Business Schools. At first I could not see its relevance to my report until I idly asked him how many members the association had and he replied 138. I then realised that we had both a problem and an opportunity.
We often find ourselves engaged with members of large organizations on questions of how to be more innovative and entrepreneurial. In virtually every case we hear something like this:
“I have an idea for a new product (or process, system, program, etc.). I’m not dead certain it can be pulled off, but if it could, it can have a significant impact on the business. It’s not within the day-to-day scope of my job and I certainly don’t want to put myself or the company at significant risk, but it would be a shame if I didn’t try to move the idea forward somehow. How do I do this within a pretty traditional organization?”
All else equal, a venture-capital-backed entrepreneur who starts a company that goes public has a 30 percent chance of succeeding in his or her next venture. First-time entrepreneurs, on the other hand, have only an 18 percent chance of succeeding, and entrepreneurs who previously failed have a 20 percent chance of succeeding. But why do these contrasts exist? Such performance persistence, as in the first example, is usually taken as evidence of skill. However, in the context of entrepreneurship, the belief that successful entrepreneurs are more skilled than unsuccessful ones can induce real performance persistence. In this way, success breeds success even if successful entrepreneurs were just lucky. Success breeds even more success if entrepreneurs have some skill.
