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10 lessons from a failed startup » VentureBeat
A year and a half ago, my co-founder Dev Nag and I started an internet TV network for games called PlayCafe. Our ambitious plan was to run highly interactive game shows in which everyone was a contestant. Players could watch our hosts, answer questions, win prizes, form teams, call our studio, live chat, and run their own games. It was a huge undertaking, but despite great engagement — users watched for 87 minutes per session and 40 percent returned within a week — we didn’t reach enough users. We may revive it in the future, but for now, we’ve placed the site in hibernation and returned remaining funds to our investors.
What follows is a post-mortem of what we did right and wrong and how we will improve next time. I feel too many entrepreneurs are afraid to discuss their failures, locking up important lessons. I hope you find some of this useful.
Top 10 Reasons to Start Up in the Recession
Regardless of what people around you (including the media) may say, right now is the best time to get into business. Just go back and look at the economic slowdowns throughout history. Most recessions in the post-World War II era last an average of 10 months, followed by growth cycles that last an average of 50 months.
What this means for the startup is there's no better time than right now to get going and start pursuing your business dreams--in anticipation of the next period of growth.
Three new jobs you might want to consider
Every company that works online today ought to consider hiring three amazing people to lead these projects:
Why your web startup will fail
Somewhere in the back of your mind, there’s likely an idea for a startup that rears its head from time to time. Perhaps it’s an iPhone app that reads minds, a search engine that’s better than Google, or it could even be the best way to buy music online. I can’t tell you how to make it a success, but I can share a few obstacles that you should be mindful of before starting out.
How to Start a Startup
You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.
And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. Hard, but doable.
If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it. There is no magically difficult step that requires brilliance to solve.
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies.
When Microsoft and Apple were founded.
As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup. I'm not claiming it's a particularly good time either. The truth is more boring: the state of the economy doesn't matter much either way.
If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly, but as a predictor of success it's rounding error compared to the founders.
Recession Proof Your Startup
Clearly not EVERY startup will do well. Why? People change their behavior in recessions, but that behavior does NOT change equally. In this case companies had stopped buying non-essential items, which means that promotional items get cut first.
So, the question to me is “how do you recession proof your startup?”
5 Tips for Choosing a Co-Founder
(MH - I'd also apply this to senior employees within a small business)
They say choosing your partner is the most important decision you will make in life. I’d say choosing your co-founder(s) is the most important decision you will make in building your company. Here are five tips to help you choose wisely:
Startup Australia - Exercise for Entrepreneurs
It's a get together of people from different disciplines that have an interest in startups and do a complete startup in one weekend. From coming up with the idea and making a business plan to pitching, design and development and marketing. The main goal is to learn from each others experience and to get a chance to work with a new group of people and of course to have a lot of fun.
Business Victoria - Essentials for Business Start-ups
Links to various resources for starting a business
The Margin Manifesto: 11 Tenets for Reaching (or Doubling) Profitability in 3 Months - The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
The financial goal of a start-up should be simple: profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees: more profit.
Based on my interviews with high-performing (using profit-per-employee metrics) CEOs in more than a dozen countries, here are the 11 basic tenets of the “Margin Manifesto”… a return-to-basics call that gives permission to do the uncommon to achieve the uncommon: consistent profitability (or doubling of it) in 3 months or less.
How to Build a Financial Crisis-Proof Business
With fewer opportunities to cash out of their current and future portfolio companies, the agendas of angels and VCs will also shift. Founders who are raising funds will certainly want to revamp their pitch decks, if they are to have any success raising capital in the current climate.
But how? What should a startup founder put on that slide in their investor presentation that addresses potential future outcomes? How can founders adjust their messaging to demonstrate to VCs that they have their strategy aligned with the needs of the investing community now? We asked Faysal Sohail, the managing partner with CMEA Ventures, for advice. Here’s what he had to say.
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Build companies that address product gaps left by large companies.
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Examples would be clean technology, pharmaceutical and enterprise solutions.
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What Startups Can Learn From Billy “Moneyball” Beane
Nelson says tracking nonstandard performance stats has helped improve the efficiency of NetSuite’s sales process. Most CEOs track their marketing spend, lead generations and closed contracts independently; NetSuite tracks which marketing plans (players) turn into leads (walk ons) and which leads convert to sales (runs). If improving your company’s sales efficiency is the aim, then “walk ons” — or how you get to the sale — is the key stat, just as in baseball. Below Nelson offers a few tips from Beane’s play book to get you started “managing by the numbers.”
8 Startup Insights Inspired By The Mega Mind of Seth Godin
I’ve had a really interesting and crazy week (crazy in a good way). As many regular readers of OnStartups.com know, I’m a huge Seth Godin fan. I’ve read most of Seth’s books over the years and keep up with his blog. He’s even been kind enough to comment on one of my prior OnStartups articles (“Why Your Startup Shouldn’t Hire Seth Godin”). But, until recently, I’ve never had the opportunity to actually hear him speak in person. This past week, I got to hear Seth twice.
Most recently, Seth was a keynote speaker at the recent Inbound Marketing Summit in Kendall Square, Cambridge (MIT central). Not only did I get to hear Seth speak, live and in person, I had the thrill of getting to have lunch with Seth and “just chat about stuff” (like getting some advice about my startup). This has got to be the most thrilling thing that’s happened to me all year. Very exciting. [Interesting trivia: Early in Seth’s career he worked in Kendall Square for Spinnaker Software].
So, here are some of the ideas and insights I gleaned from Seth, that I thought might be useful to other startup fanatics.
Stanford Magazine: July/August1999
There was no doubt about it: I had discovered The Next Big Thing. Like Edison and the lightbulb, like Gates and the pc operating system, I would launch a revolution that would transform society while bringing me wealth and fame.
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