Sunday, April 18, 2010

Sorry CEO!!, you are not my Target Audience

There might be many reasons why many start up's fail, but after a lot of Q and A and discussion in my upper membrane, I came to a conclusion. If you have a list of all the things you shouldn't do, you can turn that into a recipe for succeeding just by negating. And this form of list may be more useful in practice. It's easier to catch yourself doing something you shouldn't than always to remember to do something you should. In a sense there's just one mistake that kills startups: not making something users want. If you make something users want, you'll probably be fine; whatever else you do or don't do. And if you don't make something users want, then you're dead, whatever else you do or don't do. The warning signal comes when you think and make your product for your own convenience rather with respect to your user.

In my career, I have made products which user wish to use. Sorry Mr. CEO, I don’t make products for you because you’re not my TG and I am not here to impress you.

I am listing few reasons for failure since most of the start up's failure funnel through these:-

1. Single Founder

2. Multiple Founder with limited powers and Zero Expertise

3. Bad Location

4. Concentration on Marginal Niche to Avoid competition hoping to get success

5. Derivative Ideas

6. Obstinacy/Being stubborn or Refractory / Not willing to accept failure and stubborn to accept better ideas

7. Hiring Bad Programmers

8. Choosing wrong platform / No research done

9. Tortoise Steps in launching / Else Launching before time without fixes

10. Having no specific Target User in Mind

11. Hiring best employee's with less pay / Bad HR resources.

12. Raising too little money or Spending excess of money

13. Poor Investor management

14. Sacrificing users to Profit

15. Tussle between founders

16. No research and getting self hands dirty

17. Hiring people with no competitive role and out of bounds competition employees

18. Giving employees a platform to work for their own. Remember a Start-up is neither a ground of interns neither it is a home for parasites who work for them using your own resource. Most Dangerous.

19. Hiring HR with no expertise in your Domain. Remember they bring no value as consultants.

20. Imbalance appreciation of work, low motivation, and no interaction with employees. Instead fake promises are biggest cause of failure.

1 comment:

  1. this is good shite my mate.....

    ur booss must be a real pain in ur scrawny arse... eh... :P.

    ReplyDelete