Keep Your Startup from Failing with this Guide
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” — Bill Gates
Failure is a large part of starting a business. In fact, about 90% of all startups fail. And in the world of entrepreneurship, failure is not only expected, it’s embraced. From “Fail Fast, Fail Often” to “Fail Better” to “Fail Forward”, mantras about failure and its “benefits” abound in Silicon Valley.
However, as innovative tech luminaries extol the virtues of failure as a means to success, more and more aspiring founders take these words as gospel, celebrating startup snafus as instances of silicon-fueled bravado while neglecting to take the time to learn from mistakes and miscalculations that could have been easily avoided with a modicum of foresight.
And that is why we’ve compiled an in-depth guide that explores the ways in which entrepreneurs can learn from failure, specifically other startups that failed. While following the methods presented here won’t completely preclude you from making the occasional blunder when launching and running your company, it will make you think twice about taking the unnecessary risks that may leave your startup in the scrap heap.
Why You Should Learn from Failing Instead of Just Failing
Starting a tech company comes with its share of risks, and therefore, the chances of failure are considerably high. While the ability to get back on the horse after a defeat is a commendable trait, it seems that too many founders get caught up in the idea that not only may you fail when trying to launch a startup, but that you SHOULD fail. Founders should be bold and take risks and experiment, but doing so without preparation and foresight will not get you anywhere.
In the Forbes article “Why Silicon Valley’s ‘Fail Fast’ Mantra Is Just Hype”, Rob Asghar illuminates on the reality of many entrepreneurs, stating that many of them actually fear failure and warns of the dangers of carelessly embracing a mentality that is synonymous with overnight success:
How to Find Failed Startups in Your Industry
Because failure is so prevalent in the world of startups, more and more entrepreneurs are willing to open up about why their companies didn’t work, which means that there is an abundance of resources for fledgling founders. Below is a list of just a few of the resources, each with a wealth of valuable information:
- 135 Startup Failure Post-Mortems — This CB Insights article is a compilation of startup post-mortems that describe the factors that drove a startup’s demise told from the founder’s perspectives, but some also from the investor’s’ point of view.
- 14 Startup Postmortems — Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, compiled this list of startup postmortems that he believes provides considerable value to budding founders.
- 33 Startups That Died Reveal Why They Failed — This Business Insider article gathers blog posts on a variety of failed startups from numerous industries.
- 5 SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS THAT FAILED & WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM THEM — Featuring key insights from founders that actually made it before having to close up shop, this Foundr article consists of lessons learned from Nayeem Hussain of Keen Home, Pippin Williamson of Pippin’s Plugins, and more.
- 77 Failed Startup Post-Mortems — This eBook from mozyrko.pl gathers a multitude of essays from the founders and investors of failed startups from throughout the web.
- Autopsy — Lessons from Failed Startups — Launched this year, Autopsy is a site that collects stories of startup failure to share the lessons learned with the startup community.
- Startup Adoption Agency — Startup Adoption Agency is the place to adopt struggling startups that are looking for new management.
- Startup Postmortems — Another curated list of startups that failed, consisting of entrepreneurial fables from Everest, Wattage, Dinnr, Exec, and many more.
- Startup Post-Mortems Offer All Sorts Of Surprising Lessons — This Fast Company article plucks the best tips and bits of wisdom from 51 accounts of startup failures in multiple industries from 2007.
- These 12 startups died in Q2. Here’s why and how — Featured on VentureBeat, this article takes a look at 12 startups that ceased operations in one quarter earlier this year.
And if none of these sites give you what you need, you can always conduct simple searches on Google, Quora, HackerNews, FounderDating, TheFunded, Crunchbase, AngelList, and Linkedin, to find companies in your space or stories on failure.
However you find related companies that failed in your industry, be sure to always keep an updated list of contacts of founders, employees, and investors of startups that didn’t succeed.
