How to screw your startup
in few simple moves:


Little nightly thoughts
by Business Exploration

Dear Fellow Innovator,

My friend Vitalii Duk, of Dubai Data Science Meetup has recently posted a nice article on Medium:
9 Cataclysmic Ways to Make Your Tech Startup Fail about his experience as successful "startup-failer".
As a go to market coach and former strategic marketer in charge of a New Products Introduction portfolio, I also witnessed a few sure way to crash a business venture. Here they are.


9 Cataclysmic Ways to Make Your Tech Startup Fail:

click on the picture to reach Vitalii's Article


Let's start with a brief recap of Vitalii's Fail best practices:

  1. Have Only Technical Co-Founders
  2. Rush the Product Build
  3. Don’t Worry About Your Legal Setup
  4. Keep that equity all to yourselves
  5. Be the perfectionist you want to see in the world
  6. Investors are only looking to burn money.
  7. "Be first to market" is for schmucks
  8. Stick to Your Core Skills
  9. Created a startup around your own problem


Read Vitalii's article on medium for the full explanation. His sarcasm is distilled from experience... Now let me add 9 further ways I eye-witnessed in my 15 years career as go to market coach:

Further 9 sure ways to startup failure:

  1. Have a all-biz team
    ( you can always hire a nerdy nerd coder to deal with that techy part...oh yes...)
  2. Forgetting on-line biz it is not "only" on-line
    (yes: behind the front-desk there is always at least an accountant back-desk...believe or not)
  3. Reaching customers, one by one.
    (MVP do not means: target one client at time, it means target one segment at time...)
  4. Start with pocket money.
    (get funding around your idea "before" to start working on your idea... it's the first market test)
  5. Having your "significant other" as partner
    (ok sometime it works, but most not: figure out launching and sleeping with your shareholder... if not worst)
  6. Maneuvering "Price" without any experience on it.
    (Price is the faster and most sensitive business lever, use it at your risk)
  7. Entrenching behind the screen.
    (believe or not, business is relationship, and this requires human touch)
  8. Confounding "writing" with "copywriting".
    (yes you can write your website text by yourself, but there is a reason if someone is paid to write words that sell...)
  9. Giving your name to your "baby"
    ("Homen nomen": choose the wrong name and you are done ... )


Don't miss the next hint: