9 Startup Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making
By: Timmy Brain
Tags: Business Strategy, Startup Life, Startup, Startup Marketing, Startup Lessons

9 Startup Mistakes You Don’t Know You’re Making

Photo by Yasin Yusuf on Unsplash

“Software is eating the world,” said Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen. The world around us is fast-changing and fast-growing from a bricks-and-mortars village to a clicks-and-orders city. And the frontiers of the new order are startups.

From Silicon Valley to Yabacon Valley, these economic powerhouses are popping up at every corner. With no certification barriers, nor mirage years of experience, or a great sense of fashion, a startup is predicated on a promising idea with a massive market either validated or not.

With the alarming failure rate, no one should ever dare to bear the brunt of such lucid daydreaming and illusory pursuits. It is ludicrous and rationally unfathomable to quit your job to start one. And, undeniably, a sheer display of insanity to fund one with $2 billion dollars.

Yet, we can’t deny the affluence of the startup world on the global economy. Nobody hires more than startups. Startups account for over 50% of jobs in the US alone. Capturing a whopping $3 trillion of global GDP, coupled with the underlying fact of heavy reliance of other economic activities on the transformational byproducts of the startup voyage.

With some much at our collective benefit; the raise, nurture, and success of startups become our eminent concern. Having worked on two startups myself, here are 9 startup mistakes that apparently account for the majority of failures for starters in the ecosystem.

Leadership

“Everything rises and fall on Leadership” — John C. Maxwell

Arguments may spur from different quarters as to what contributes the most to startup failures and the list spins by its author. For me, leadership always tops the chart in any endeavor that depends on people because leadership informs everything else.

Three areas of leadership pitfalls founders should pay careful attention to:

1. Democratic leadership

Sure, you don’t want to be an asshole. You want a frictionless office where everybody is happy having a siesta, canoodling their pets, and streaming Youtube all day long.

In meetings, you want all opinions tabled. Every t must be crossed and all i dotted. Everyone has a novel perceptive and all opinions must receive a mic and gracefully entertained. You are sold into the bullshit.

There you go young lad, you have successfully set up your startup to fail. Strong leadership is critical to startup building. For the big part, you have to be a dictator that listens.

Your demands should be clear and precise. Co-CEOs should define their jurisdictions for authoritative declarations. Subjecting every tiny little thing to dialogues and deliberations will ruin your startup in due time.

2. Timestamp leadership

All thanks to the Peters who heed to your evangelism from the cradle. They truly deserve every piece of equity they hold.

How about leadership? Not so quick, champ!

Even capability fails in this terrain. What is bankable is established competence. Put the best hands on the jobs, not the old hands.

Don’t be pressured into assigning leaders on the premise of their years of service. How long you have known them. Or the mere fact that you start it together.

Leadership is not for the perks. It is a call to serve. It should be dutifully regarded as such and only those with proven competence should be pushed to mount the seat and stir the company to greatness.

3. Leadership underdevelopment

Most often startups cajole themselves as too busy cooking codes and hunting partnerships to afford the luxury of leadership development. It is a vital flaw excused on today’s fast-paced fast-growing market.

From Netflix to Google, great companies prioritize leadership development early. Lacking leadership accounts for most ruinous indecisions that cripple nimbleness which is an important ingredient for startups’ success. Fully commit to improving the team and its players, then wait for its exponential returns.

Timing

“Time isn’t the main thing. It’s the only thing” — Miles Davis

“Timing”, revealed billionaire founder and chairman of Idealab, Bill H. Gross, “accounted for 42 percent of the difference between success and failure.”

It has always been a question of why(the preposition), what (product), how (the process), and whom (the prospect). More than before the question of when (timing) has surged to become a primal concern in the equation.

It can either be too late, too early or right in the middle of a pandemic. Understanding the art and science of when is a new challenge for all startup founders.

This is not the question of when to amass large audiences for launch parties. It is about inventing YouTube before browsers can accommodate videos and the bandwidth penetration was low, and that’s the case for Z.com.

If your idea is too late, you are done for. The market is already a red ocean with stiff neck competition. If you are too early, advance, and way before your time, you are forced to educate the users which fails most of the time.

For instance, Airbnb launched during the Subprime Mortgage Crisis of 2008 that leads the country into recession. During this time, people really need some extra cash to sustain themselves, and renting out their apartment for the night seems reasonable.

Fast forward to 2020 and the global imperative to keep social distance due to COVID, Airbnb struggles to keep its business and forced to lay off 2000 employees. Despite the brilliant idea, if Airbnb were to launch in 2020, it would have appeared to the world as a failed idea incapable of generating unicorns.

Product

“Why is marketing losing its clout? Because it forgot its first name: product.” — Bill Campbell (Excerpt From Eric Schmidt. “Trillion Dollar Coach”.)

All great companies are built on great products. There are no shortcuts around that. The arguments for product-market-fit are concrete and everlasting.

Business is an infinite game. You can’t build a thriving startup around wave-of-the-moment trivial ideas. At the core of your business must be a rock-solid offering that is worth all the hypes and sweats.

However, pivoting is part of the game. More than the competitors, you must be ready to adapt to the changing realities of the market.

“An awful lot of successful technology companies ended up being in a slightly different market than they started out in.” — Marc Andreessen

If you ever found your product missing the fit remember this brilliant observation of Marc Andreessen — develop a new offer.

Marketing

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” — Seth Godin

It is profound to be product-obsessed. It is remarkable to be user-experience centric.

However, take it as no mistake that Steve Jobs was considered a marketing genius despite his keen interest in design aesthetics. And, Elon Musk — the genius of Engineering, founder of SpaceX, CEO of the electric car company, Telsa, and a frontier of modern scientific breakthroughs was labeled a sales grandmaster by Peter Thiel (friend, ex-colleague at PayPal, and investor in Tesla).

Attention is worth every dime you can pay for it. Don’t kill your startup with oblivion. Tell your brand story, every time, everywhere to everyone that matters.

No amount of hype can be too much for your brand unless you fail to back it with a proven product like Theranos. Tell your story or allow others to tell it for you. I am only not sure the latter will do justice to the things you stand for.

Sales

“Nothing happens except a sale is made.” — Peter Drucker

Product. Hype. Conversion.

Without the last, your startup is doomed. Yet, a whole school of thought has continually discounted sales. In fact, salesmen are not proud to be called one.

You can’t negotiate the space for sales especially for startups with high-end products or in B2B markets. You must build your sales warrior and arm them to be rainmakers.

Secondly, don’t scale your sales team. Scale your sales process. Adopt the best CRMs and automation tools to ensure each of your salesperson's full potential is exploited.

The downturn of scaling the sales team is a loose culture. More importantly, Sales is at the heart of every business. Your sales strategy should be efficient enough to be considered a secret. Letting it out to all Dick, Tom, and Harry leaves your business an open-secret.

It was after scaling my sales team to about 50 salesmen I finally learned this lesson. I was way blinded by the increase in revenue in the early start once a salesperson is added to the team. Later, I discovered all rising competitors thrive on our exact sales strategy.

I took the risk and brutally prune the team down to only the top 12 players. The first month was a very tough one, but ever since the numbers have remained positive and ever-growing.

Competition

“Be obsessed with the customer, but know your competitors.” — Elon Jobs

Keeping blind to competitors is a crime in business. Prioritize the customer, but keep a watching eye on the competition.

You can learn a whole lot from your competitors’ failures and mistakes. Be cognizant of the new innovation and features that are working out for them.

Twitter’s Fleet is not an innovation, it is responding to the competition. Even Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and LinkedIn were not the originators of Status.

Secondly, you must study indirect competitors. One new Google feature, an addon on Shopify, and a new acquisition by Facebook may be the end of your startup. Apple iTunes launch might signal the end of your Odeo.

Thirdly, don’t win a battle and lose the war. Challenging top names like Facebook, Apple, Netflix, and Google can be a ridiculously bad idea. In this article, I detailed why disruption no longer works.

Culture

“Company culture doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture.” — Peter Thiel

Culture is how best your team can get work done. It is a simple set of philosophies that will be largely unwritten and unspoken governing how your team treats work and each other.

Hiring an expert to define your corporate culture is altogether a horrible idea. It accounts for gross disconnection in the workplace.

Don’t over flog the idea of culture. Set the tune, be the lead, allow the team to buy in, and evolve the culture over time. There is no one book to set your culture straight out of the box.

No matter what, don’t hire for the here and now. Assess the Culture fitness of every talent before bringing them on board. The gateway is the primary place to set the culture straight.

Don’t allow a virus into your system, then scout around for anti-virus. Cut the shot from the gate.

Meetings

Meetings are critical to startup success. In fact, the work environment should be open that it feels like meetings are going on every time. Anything short of such standards can be ruinous.

Interactive development is crucial at the start. Everyone should be on board and updated on new developments.

However, all meetings must be meaningful and purposeful. Meetings should not be an avenue for intellectual masturbation and selective display of wits.

There is always a sweet spot between too much and too little, that’s the spot to hunt for.

Strategy

“A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.” — Lee Bolman

A bad plan is better than no plan. As sales is a child of marketing, so is marketing a child of strategy.

Mike Tyson was right. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. However, no plan at all is tantamount to absolute failure.

Every startup should have an idea of a good exit, marketing channels, possible partnerships, and expansion opportunities. It may not be necessary to have a full flagged business plan, but a quality pitch deck signal clarity of vision.

Be aware of your next five moves if you can’t think of fifteen moves. Being strategic is being intentional. It is not necessarily knowing what to add, but at least what to remove.

It is no coincidence there is no touch screen Macbook, it is because Apple is clear on what will happen to its iPad market.

Final thoughts

With increased shared knowledge and awareness of best practices, we can drastically reduce the rate of startup failures and expand the ecosystem beyond its current horizon.