If you are running a startup, you would want to know, like many others, why startups fail. The research company CB Insights studied many cases and highlighted the top 20 reasons which you could learn from.
#20 – Failure to pivot when necessary. Not pivoting away or quickly enough from a bad product or a bad decision.
#19 – Burn Out - overworked team.
#18 – Do not use connections or network.
#17 – Legal Challenges: Evolving from a simple idea to a world of legal complexities that causes the shutting down of a startup.
#16 – No Financing or Interested Investors.
#15 – Location. There is no or lack of congruence between your startup’s concept and location.
#14 – Lack Passion and Domain Expertise.#13 - Pivot Gone Bad.Pivots like Burbn to Instagram or ThePoint to Groupon can go extraordinarily well.However, it should be well managed like making changes to the business model, testing hypotheses and measuring results.
#12 – Disharmony with Investors/Co-founder.
#11 – Lose Focus such as getting sidetracked by distracting projects, personal issues, and/or general loss of focus.#10 – Release product at the wrong time
#9 – Being inflexible and not actively seeking or using customer feedback#8 – Poor Marketing
#7 – Not suitable business model. Staying wedded to a single channel or failing to find ways to make money at scale.#6 – A “User Un-Friendly” Product
#5 – Pricing/Cost Issues. Too high or too low pricing
#4 – Get out-competed.
#3 – Not the right team.#2 – Ran out of cash.
#1 – Building a solution looking for a problem. Tackling problems that are interesting to solve rather than those that serve a market.
Can you relate to any of the issues above?
Source: CBinsights. Cover image: unsplash, benjamin-child.