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Why startups fail?

5 unexpected reasons why your startup might fail even before you launch it

Ana Bibikova
6 min readJul 23, 2021

Most people who haven’t launched startup yet and gain their knowledge from business schools, YouTube videos, or insightful books believe that startups fail for obvious reasons:

  • No product-market-fit
  • Bad cash flow
  • Founders conflict
  • Too much investors dependency
  • Bad/ slow-developing product (it = better competition because if there’s no competition even shitty products will work when customers need some solution to their pain).

There are great insights on all of these points in YC CEO Michael Siebel here.

However, if you ask founders who had failed their startups before, they’d name totally different reasons. As well as the lessons they’ve learned. Well, it’s great to know the official VC view on the problem. But practical advice is much more valuable.

1. Messy hiring process

Actually, investors know that the startup team is the key. They invest in teams, not the ideas. Founders know it too and try to showcase their credentials as much as they can (“2x founder”, “ex-Google”, etc.) But they rarely think this rule is applicable to all hires of the…

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Ana Bibikova
Ana Bibikova

Written by Ana Bibikova

Marketing strategist, startups mentor, co-founder in www.wizenguides.com

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