Biggest Mistakes that kill Startups

If you have a list of things you shouldn’t do, you have better chances at success. The same goes for startups.

BI India lists the 18 biggest startup mistakes for you to avoid (with some help from the guys at Funders and Founders):

1. Single Founder – As a single founder you have little chances of securing big funding. It’s no coincidence that founders who succeeded did so as a team.

2. Bad Location – you can change everything about an apartment except its location. Similarly, if your startup is in a bad location, you can’t change that.

3. Marginal Niche – If you choose an obscure niche, your startup would end up in a corner. If you’re afraid of competition, this is not the way to go about it.

4. Derivative Idea – Remember, tomorrow’s Google may be nothing like today’s Google.

5. Obstinacy – Inability to adapt kills startups left, right and center.

6. Hiring Bad Programmers – Exceptional programmers are always in short supply. Hire good ones.

7. Choosing the Wrong Platform – How fast you scale would determine whether your startup lives or dies. On the wrong platform scalability will a problem.

8. Slow Launch – The longer you delay the launch, the more you delay getting the answer whether your startup should exist.

9. Launching Too Early – Launch too early, and you may be completely unprepared to handle anything.

10. Having No Specific User in Mind – If you think somewhere someone will interested in your product, you need to know who that is.

11. Raising Too Little Money – With too little money you may not be able to do all that you wanted to to their full potential.

12. Spending Too Much – Spend too much before you grow enough, and you’re broke. The End.

13. Raising Too Much Money – Raising too much can make you feel like a success even before you did anything useful. At the end of the day it’s users you want to impress.

14. Poor Investor Management – If the choice is between making investors or users happy, always choose the latter. If the user is happy, your investors will make money.

15. Sacrificing Users to Profit – you can always make money. This however, cannot be said about making users happy. You need to make something they want.

16. Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty – Go out and meet people. You can’t solve all your problems with coding.

17. Fights Between Founders – Founder conflict is very common, and it can have lasting impacts.

18. A Half-Hearted Effort – A lack of determination to see your startup idea through to the end spells disaster.

Image credit: Funders and Founders