The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
October 2006In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of a trick question. It's equivalent to asking how to make a startup succeed — if you avoid every cause of failure, you succeed — and that's too big a question to answer on the fly.Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem from this direction.
- ▪October 2006In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail.
- ▪After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of a trick question.
- ▪It's equivalent to asking how to make a startup succeed — if you avoid every cause of failure, you succeed — and that's too big a question to answer on the fly.Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem from this direc
Paul Graham — Essays files mainly under blogs. We currently carry 219 of its stories.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator. October 2006In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of a trick question. It's equivalent to asking how to make a startup succeed — if you avoid every cause of failure, you succeed — and that's too big a question to answer on the fly.Afterwards I realized it could be helpful to look at the problem from this direction. If you have a list of all the things you shouldn't do, you can turn that into a recipe for succeeding just by negating. And this form of list may be more useful in practice. It's easier to catch yourself doing something you shouldn't than always to remember to do something you should.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Paul Graham — Essays.