“The Ultimate Start-Up Guide: Marketing Lessons, War Stories and Hard-Won Advice … ” by Tom Hogan and Carol Broadbent (Career Press, $16.99).
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“The Ultimate Start-Up Guide: Marketing Lessons, War Stories and Hard-Won Advice … ” by Tom Hogan and Carol Broadbent (Career Press, $16.99).
The authors, who’ve experienced B2B success and failure, learned easy-way and hard-way lessons from their experience and that of angel investors and venture capitalists. They start by highlighting reasons that startups fail, and rightly so — if you can avoid missteps at the beginning, you’ll increase the odds of success. The top reasons startups fail:
“No market need” — New or improved doesn’t mean the market will embrace it. If you haven’t done your homework on the “why it’s needed,” you won’t be able to convince prospects to buy your product/service. “Need” deals with more than usability. Buyers must make a business case that addresses affordability and smooth integration with existing operations.
“Running out of money” — Plans never go as planned. Budgets should include the costs of slippage in design, production and delivery. Slippage can be financially disastrous as windows of opportunity open and close quickly, especially with seasonal items.
“Expanding market focus too quickly” — This deals with loss of focus on the initial market “whether driven by early sales feedback or engineering desire.” Efforts to “improve (save?)” the product devolve into trying to be “a lot of different things to a lot of different markets.” Lack of focus creates operational and financial havoc; see “Running out of money” above.
“A founder that doesn’t listen” — Many founders act like dictators by refusing to listen to what employee and market feedback tells them. Despite reality, they stick with their vision. The result: Employees bail and the business fails.
If you can address the “failure” issues detailed in the first few chapters, the “run your business” advice in the remaining chapters will increase the odds of long-term success.
