Why Startups Fail: An Analysis of Post-Mortems (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Why Startups Fail: An Analysis of Post-Mortems (2011)

foundersblock.com

55 pointsColinWright17 comments

This could be more accurately titled, "why entrepreneurs thought they failed." Personally, I'm not sure failed entrepreneurs are qualified to make that diagnosis.

The entrepreneurs themselves may not be accurate in knowing why they failed, but there is learning to be had from hearing why they think they failed. Comparing these data with reasons from other sources would be even more interesting.

Seems unnecessarily cynical. For many categories of mistakes, it is not hard to see the mistake in hindsight.

specifically relationships between founders and investors would only be known from the parties themselves.

an objective third party analysis miss personal problems between founders 1 and 2

Quote: #2 – Built a Solution Without A Problem (i.e. No “Market Need”)

Choosing to tackle problems that are interesting to solve rather than those that serve a market need was often cited as a reason for failure. Sure, you can build an app and see if it will stick, but knowing there is a market need upfront is a good thing. “Companies should tackle market problems not technical problems

I am trying to figure out how to think more clearly about this type thing and write about it. I am sorry to see so little discussion here on HN for this submission.

The brutal truth is that most startups do not do anything remotely important or useful enough to adopt. The predominant attitude among many Silicon Valley wannabe billionaires is hoping to get acquired instead of doing anything actually ambitious. Which explains why what we see today are hordes of startups based on "products" that would be trivial features for more established companies.

I kind of relate it to modern music. Modern "academic" music is typically quite complicated and dissonant, and requires a great deal of skill on the part of the musicians to play: it sounds like crap. Modern "popular" music is simple, only a few months on the guitar will get a normal player where they can play most rock/pop.

You can waste months writing "perfect" Haskell that nobody cares about, or write some really buggy Java and make Minecraft.

Since the beginning of hacker news this has been one of the most discussed topics here. Paul Graham's essays are a good place to start.

I am aware of his essays. I am trying to think and talk about something specific, let's call it Memology for the moment. I am not talking about start-ups per se but more about he architecture of ideas and how we separate the wheat from the chafe. I have explored that in terms of human psychology for myself. I would like to explore it for the business space. I hope it will be of interest to other people at some point.

Thanks.

Original discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7244605 (incidentally, submitted by the same person)

As you pointed out, the previous discussion linked to a secondary source, not the original article. Also, one comment hardly constitutes a discussion.

Yes. Having come across it I submitted that, and then someone pointed out the original source, so I submitted that instead (here). Now that original submission is dead.

For completeness, the one comment on that first submission was by compare[0] saying:

    The list sounds more predictive
    than descriptive.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=compare

Having come across it I submitted that, and then someone pointed out the original source, so I submitted that instead

Why?

Not sure I understand your question. The guidelines[0] say:

    Please submit the original source. If a blog post
    reports on something they found on another site,
    submit the latter.

Having realized that what I'd submitted wasn't the original source I attempted to correct that oversight. Just seemed the right thing to do.

[0] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Personally, I don't really care about the guidelines all the time. If you take that overly literally, then nobody could submit anything that referred to something else via a link. I get the need to eliminate outright "blogspam" but not everything that comments on "something else" is blogspam.

If somebody reports on something and adds useful commentary, insight, whatever, I don't see the point in insisting on some arbitrary standard of "only link to most upstream source". It's not like people aren't capable of following links.

Copy of post. Original here -

http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/top-reasons-startups-fail-an...

What about not being able to raise that first round?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com