#500Failures #ProblemsPitfalls

Anyone can talk/write about MICRO-level reasons why any particular entrepreneur/startup struggled…

And anyone can talk/write about specific circumstances surrounding the failures of any given (individual) entrepreneur/startup.

But the one (or 3? or 10?) first-hand or second-hand accounts that many have seen/heard/experienced simply isn’t a large enough sample-size to identify patterns or draw any statistically-relevant conclusions to help current/future entrepreneurs — particularly each new year of young and/or first-time founders.

We’ve now interviewed 500+ entrepreneurs, observed/analyzed 500+ more from close range, and seen 1000+ startup pitches… and become borderline-obsessed with identifying the MACRO-level reasons, the 10,000-feet view of the patterns and most persistently-pervasive problems & pitfalls that are persistently plaguing young and/or first-time entrepreneurs year after year after year…

We’re currently trying to figure out the best way to package and share everything we’ve learned (since, admittedly, organization and presentation skills aren’t exactly one of our strengths — #SelfAwareness), but, in the meantime…

• www.medium.com/startup-whatever for a list of 50+ columns (big-picture Thoughts On Startups and some “ReThinking Startups’ *S.H.I.T. to SHARE!”
  *[Strategies, Hypotheses, Insights, Theories]
• and/or, see below for a small sample of some of the very specific stories that helped shape some of my bigger-picture Thoughts/Theories & Improvement Initiatives…

No names, no identifying personal or company information, but all these stories are 100% true (gathered over roughly 3 years via conversations and interviews with roughly 150 founders/cofounders, all within one city’s startup community)…

Hopefully I’ll get around to writing this up better, but the key points are that these are A) some of the real stories of real startup founders that rarely get shared… but, B) these are MICRO-level stories, so, when they ARE shared, they’re generally dismissed as anomalies or “well, that [very SPECIFIC story] would never happen to me because [specific reason why that specific story wouldn’t apply]”.

But the specific details aren’t as important as the collective view, the macro-level patterns that emerge from a 10,000-feet view of all the micro-level stories… of the stress, struggles, problems, pitfalls, failures, depression, etc. …

Maybe you hear the story about the hospital visit with chest pains that was diagnosed as a panic attack, maybe you hear the story about the divorce, etc. But nobody really gets the full view of ALL of those stories in totality. It’s not about any individual stories — it’s about the HUGE pattern that is never really seen because nobody is hearing more than 1 or 2 or 3 of the HUNDREDS of similar stories…

In no particular order…

[Note: I actually moved this to another page because it was getting too long — ask me and I can find it… i think]