Why Startups Fail

Why Startups Fail

Author: Tom Eisenmann

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0593137027

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If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.


Start-Up Smart

Start-Up Smart

Author: Robin Bennett

Publisher: Harriman House Limited

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 67

ISBN-13: 1906659834

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Guides you through the key steps involved in setting up and running a business. This title shows that it's possible for anyone to become their own boss, and that it can be done without ending up in debt to the bank or completely stressed out.


Start-Up Smarts

Start-Up Smarts

Author: Barry H Cohen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2009-12-18

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1440512914

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"The section on testing your new business concept is unlike anything in any other book on start-ups. How much is it worth to know that your new business is something your customers will want--before you invest in it?" --Pat Cunningham, Wall Street Journal Advertising Advisor and former Vice Chairman, N. W. Ayer Global Advertising Agency "Start-Up Smarts is an explosive work of ten powerful, practical steps that lay out reality." --Dr. Jeffrey Magee, Publisher, Performance Magazine To make sure your start-up succeeds in the most profitable way, you need to plan and prepare your way to prosperity. This means learning the secrets of successful entrepreneurs--from knowing whom to trust to adapting in a changing marketplace. Start-up specialists and thriving business owners Barry H. Cohen and Michael Rybarski reveal the critical keys to getting your new business up and running a profit, in-cluding how to: Create a Flexible Business Plan Find Out What Your Customers Really Want Capitalize on the Right Trends Hire the Best People Choose the Most Lucrative Partners Complete with real-life success stories from first-time entrepreneurs and the best businesses to start right now, Start-Up Smarts guarantees your new business will prosper in any market!


The Smart Start Up

The Smart Start Up

Author: Tom Hopkins

Publisher: Morgan James Publishing

Published: 2018-07-03

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1683509382

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“Start and build a high-profit business, choose exactly the right product for you, outsell your competition, and put yourself onto the road to riches” (Brian Tracy, New York Times–bestselling author). The Smart Start Up helps readers start strong and stay strong in the early phases of growing their businesses, providing fundamental strategies for beating the odds. With this information, entrepreneurs will be able to reach the success level of their dreams—whether that’s to create a legacy for generations or to follow the build-and-sell-it road to success. Within these pages, Tom Hopkins and Omar Periu delve deeply into the nuances of business ownership both on the practical and emotional side of things. They will help readers avoid some of the most common pitfalls entrepreneurs face. Readers will learn how to establish a compass they and the rest of their teams can rely on to guide business decisions going forward. Topics covered include: self-analysis as an entrepreneur; how to evaluate a business idea; how to choose the best structure for a business, including working with legal and accounting professionals; business communication skills; hiring and managing team members; prioritization; selling skills; marketing strategies; negotiation skills; and how to keep clients happy long term. “Own this book and you’ll have the opportunity to be guided to your own success by two of the best and proven teachers in the business.” —Bob Burg, bestselling coauthor of The Go-Giver and The Go-Giver Influencer “Inside the pages of this masterpiece, you’ll get the formula for success that gives you the winning edge in the hyper-competitive marketplace.” —Jeb Blount, CEO of Sales Gravy and author of Fanatical Prospecting


Smart Start-Ups

Smart Start-Ups

Author: David Silver

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2007-05-18

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0470107421

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Praise for Smart Start-Ups "Silver's new book is a masterpiece of clarity concerning the next great entrepreneurial wave, and my only problem with it was the charley horse in my elbow I got turning the pages." -Robin Richards, founding President, MP3.com, and CEO, Notification Technologies Inc. "Silver is a modern-day Prometheus. For community entrepreneurs, Smart Start-Ups contains the secrets of fire from the heavens. If you work with communities of any kind, you ignore this book at your own peril." -John Szeder, former senior game developer, Digital Chocolate, Inc., and CEO, Mofactor, Inc. "Silver dives in and pulls the naked truth out of the world of online communities. There's nothing like it on the shelves. He speaks with the best and brightest in the mobile and online community markets." -Sean Malatesta, founder, Yack Media Services, and Vice President, Indiagames, Inc. "Smart Start-Ups is a must-read for any aspiring Internet entrepreneur. Silver cuts right to the heart of the important fact that communities are like entire nations, but without geographic borders, and they're creating the greatest transformation since the Industrial Revolution." -Clarence Briggs, founder and CEO, AIT.com "Silver's book is an excellent, captivating, ingenious, and essential read for anyone who wants to know how to create wealth by starting an online community. One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way; Silver certainly succeeds in that respect." -Kyle E. Gillman, founder and CEO, Forgefinder, Inc.


Startup Rising

Startup Rising

Author: Christopher M. Schroeder

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2013-08-13

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1137356715

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Startup Rising presents a surprising look at the surge of entrepreneurship that accompanied the uprisings in the Middle East, and why it's the new best place for Western investment and opportunity. Despite the world's elation at the Arab Spring, shockingly little has changed politically in the Middle East; even frontliners Egypt and Tunisia continue to suffer repression, fixed elections, and bombings, while Syria descends into civil war. But in the midst of it all, a quieter revolution has begun to emerge, one that might ultimately do more to change the face of the region: entrepreneurship. As a seasoned angel investor in emerging markets, Christopher M. Schroeder was curious but skeptical about the future of investing in the Arab world. Travelling to Dubai, Cairo, Amman, Beirut, Istanbul, and even Damascus, he saw thousands of talented, successful, and intrepid entrepreneurs, all willing to face cultural, legal, and societal impediments inherent to their worlds. Equally important, he saw major private equity firms, venture capitalists, and tech companies like Google, Intel, Cisco, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and PayPal making significant bets, despite the uncertainty in the region. With Startup Rising, he marries his own observations with the predictions of these tech giants to offer a surprising and timely look at the second stealth revolution in the Middle East-one that promises to reinvent it as a center of innovation and progress.


The Startup Playbook

The Startup Playbook

Author: Rajat Bhargava

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-06-23

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 1119708559

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Get the real guidance you need to create and build your first startup company from founders who have been there many times before. The first run printing of The Startup Playbook SOLD OUT! So, we revised, expanded, and improved this second edition, including a new foreword by Brad Feld, author of Venture Deals. We still give our personal, how-to guide for building your startup from the ground up. You'll find a collection of the major lessons and shortcuts we've learned that will shift the odds in your favor. We're sharing our tips, secrets, and advice in a frank, founder-to-founder discussion with you. We make no bones about our bias. We're on your side, the founder's side. While venture capitalists, investors, and accelerators/incubators can add great value in the startup ecosystem, this book isn't about their points of view. We'll tell you where our interests as founders diverge from those on the other side of the table—investors, bankers, advisors, board members, and others—and what to do when that happens. The Startup Playbook is not a recipe, it's not a template, it's not a list of tasks to do. It's our insider's guide to starting a company and running it successfully in those critical early months. Between us, we've started over a dozen high-tech software companies and raised over $500 million in investment capital. We've acquired over thirty-five companies, had three of our startups go public, sold six of them, and we made billions of dollars for shareholders. We've also invested in over eighty startups, advised and mentored over two hundred companies and actively worked with venture capitalists (VCs), incubators, and accelerators to help launch many other new startups. We've had plenty of failures, too. And we've probably learned more from those than from the successes. We share those lessons as well. The Startup Playbook is full of our advice, guidance, do's, and don'ts from our years of experience as founders many times. We want to share our hard-earned knowledge with you to make success easier for you to achieve. "This book is extraordinarily fresh and exciting. In an accessible, straight talk fashion, this book is a manual, and an inspiration. The Startup Playbook is smart and avoids the 'I am so smart' over-writing endemic to the genre. Read this as it is presented. You'll be doing yourself a tremendous favor." —Amazon Reviewer


Straight Talk for Startups

Straight Talk for Startups

Author: Randy Komisar

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0062869078

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"Straight Talk for Startups memorializes age-old best practices and empowers both experienced and new investment professionals to beat the odds."—David Krane, CEO, Google Ventures "Straight Talk for Startups is filled with real, raw, and fact-based ‘rules of the road’ that you need to know when diving into our ultra-competitive startup world. A must read and a re-read!"—Tony Fadell, Coinventor of the iPod/iPhone & Founder of Nest Labs Veteran venture capitalist Randy Komisar and finance executive Jantoon Reigersman share no-nonsense, counterintuitive guidelines to help anyone build a successful startup. Over the course of their careers, Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman continue to see startups crash and burn because they forget the timeless lessons of entrepreneurship. But, as Komisar and Reigersman show, you can beat the odds if you quickly learn what insiders know about what it takes to build a healthy foundation for a thriving venture. In Straight Talk for Startups they walk budding entrepreneurs through 100 essential rules—from pitching your idea to selecting investors to managing your board to deciding how and when to achieve liquidity. Culled from their own decades of experience, as well as the experiences of their many successful colleagues and friends, the rules are organized under broad topics, from "Mastering the Fundamentals" and "Selecting the Right Investors," to "The Ideal Fundraise," "Building and Managing Effective Boards," and "Achieving Liquidity." Vital rules you’ll find in Straight Talk for Startups include: The best ideas originate from founders who are users Create two business plans: an execution plan and an aspirational plan Net income is an option, but cash flow is a fact Don’t accept money from strangers Personal wealth doesn’t equal good investing Small boards are better than big ones Add independent board members for expertise and objectivity Too many unanimous board decisions are a sign of trouble Choose an acquirer, don’t wait to be chosen Learn the rules by heart so you know when to break them Filled with helpful real-life examples and specific, actionable advice, Straight Talk for Startups is the ideal handbook for anyone running, working for, or thinking about creating a startup, or just curious about what makes high-potential ventures tick.


School for Startups: The Breakthrough Course for Guaranteeing Small Business Success in 90 Days or Less

School for Startups: The Breakthrough Course for Guaranteeing Small Business Success in 90 Days or Less

Author: Jim Beach

Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional

Published: 2011-06-17

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0071761748

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The Beginner's Guide to Low-Risk Entrepreneurship You want to start your own business, but "risk" isn't your middle name. You're not alone. Many successful entrepreneurs are averse to risk--but they have learned the tricks to working around it. And now you can too, with School for Startups. This practical guide shows you how to build a business the smart way--without risking major assets such as your house, savings account, or health insurance. You'll learn how to increase your chance of success by: Funding your venture without investors Entering international markets Taking full advantage of tools on the Web Marketing your product or service for little or no cost Deploying a third party to package and ship products Taking control of an existing business or franchise The authors present hundreds of the best ideas for new businesses, along with case studies proving the effectiveness of their approach. Also included with the book is a code you can use to register for The Entrepreneur School (www.theentrepreneurschool.com), where you can access exclusive webinars and supplementary material.


The Start-Up J Curve

The Start-Up J Curve

Author: Howard Love

Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group

Published: 2016-08-30

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1626342938

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A predictable pattern of success Entrepreneurs who have read early drafts of The Start-Up J Curve responded, ''I wish I had this book years ago.'' A start-up unfolds in a predictable pattern; the more aware entrepreneurs are of this pattern, the better able they will be to capitalize on it. Author Howard Love calls this pattern the start-up J Curve: The toughest part of the endeavor is the time between the actual start of a new business and when the product and model are firmly established. The Start-Up J Curve gives entrepreneurs the tools they need to get through the early challenges so they can reach the primary value creation that lies beyond. Love brings thirty-five years of start-up experience to this comprehensive guide to starting a business. He outlines the six predictable stages of start-up growth and details the activities that should be undertaken at each stage to ensure success and to avoid common pitfalls. Instead of feeling lost and confused after a setback, start-up founders and investors can anticipate the challenges, overcome the obstacles, and ride the curve to the top.