How I broke my startup ( Post Mortem Case )
A wonderful idea with a future success company target, an IPO, exponential growth, and a noble purpose. In 2015 when we met together to discuss raising Map Feiras ( my "dead" startup ) we had all ingredients and a lot of motivation and willpower to get it on and get it on and come up to our dream called Market Fit. However, as generally life is, sometimes things go wrong, and not always the happy path is shown before us.
I took some time to write about it because taking into consideration the top product mindset as a premise: "Fall in Love with the problem, not the solution" I always been tried to solve problems and pursue the purpose. In fact, we are all human beings, and let's agree that learning from mistakes is always memorable and bring a lot of lessons learned. The big key point here is: "Do we really a problem?", "And if the real problem doesn't exist?". Until what point product managers should persist in trying to find a real problem to be solved? As long as PMs pivot solutions if we don't have a problem to be solved there is no purpose!
Considering a CBInsights survey from 2019 we can verify 20 reasons startups fail based on data collected by the company itself. I just mentioned it because it states that 42% of startups fail because they had no market need. Keeping this in mind we could conclude that the right problem has not been found/solved or the problem itself didn't exist.
This subject is far away complex to be described just in one post however I will try to go right into the point and bring in why, in my personal opinion, my startup failed. With no further delay follow below:
- No market need
Simply and purely explaining: if you are not solving a problem maybe the problem doesn't exist or you are trying to solve the wrong one!
- Total business/startup dedication
As way as things are going deep (I meant, your startup is gaining market ) and you are open to public you need to dedicate yourself more and more to it. At this point a question must to be answered and you need to be ready to answer it: "should I quit my job and dedicate myself 100% to the business now?".
- Be surrounded by people like you (mindset and dream)
In my opinion this is very important and should be evaluated carefully. It is far common to have more than one associate by startup ( most of I worked for ). This happens by one reason: "The journey is heavy to be tracked alone but it is acceptable and could be pleasurable when shared by associates and partners who have the same dream as you."
In general, startups fail by different reasons. My startup failed primarily, in my opinion, by the points above. As a good persistent human beings I am, I tried to analyse my mistakes, my right moves and, of course, take lessons because as Eric Ries, entrepreneur and lean startup movement creator, says in one of his fantastic quotes:
if you cannot fail, you cannot learn. Failure is a prerequisite to learning.The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else. If management is the problem, chaos is the answer.
