5 Reasons Why Startups Fail

I recently read the Lean Startup by Eric Ries and these were the takeaways I took on why most startups fail. 1. You're looking at the wrong metrics! It's easy to focus on the numbers that are going up (yay we are getting new users!), but is that really what you should be focusing on? What about retention? Are you losing more people than you're gaining every month? Take a critical look at how you're looking at your data and what story it really is telling you. 2. You got funding too early If you don't delay your funding until it's really needed you can end up being too focused on making your investors happy and not your users. While it's important to have money to grow, be mindful about when you get it and why. 3. You automated things too early Don’t underestimate manually doing things at the beginning to get feedback, there’s no need to automate things until there’s an actual need. It may feel counterintuitive at first but it'll help you fail fast. 4. Never pivoting Don’t be afraid to pivot, especially when you sunk a lot of time into a design it can be easy to ignore user feedback on why it’s not working 5. Launching your MVP too late "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late." — Reid Hoffman As soon as you can provide ANY type of value to your early adopters it's time to launch (and yes it's ok your landing page doesn't look good!)