Growth Times

ReadWriteStart, the entrepreneur’s channel of ReadWriteWeb, nicely published an article I wrote for them called 10 Principles For Not Killing Your Startup.

With the new wave of entrepreneurs brought about by the financial crisis, I suspect the mortality rate of startups is at an all-time high. I didn’t find robust data to back my observation yet, but I did come across a page that points out that, before the financial crisis:

• the chances were six in a million that an idea for a high-tech business eventually would become a successful company that goes public;
• a venture capitalist financed only six out of every 1,000 business plans received each year;
• and bankruptcies occured for 60% of the high-tech startup companies that succeeded in getting venture capital.

Wow. Persistence is paramount.

As you know if you have visited my “corporate” blog, my mission in life is to change that. Start-ups shouldn’t die. They should live, prosper, and grow into healthy businesses that make people happy.

So I tried to identify the most frequent root causes of death, and for each, I created a principle. You will find the result here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/03/10-principles-not-killing-startup.php#comment-195260

Please help make the list stronger by commenting and offering additional principles.

Develop, Fund, Lead, Market commercialization, Entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, managing a startup, new business, product management, Start Up, start up mortality, start-ups, starting a business, tech ventures, venture

I will soon have another opportunity to test my beta talk on the Divide between Technologists and Business folks, and why that is the number one root cause of tech venture failures (see my slides – torn apart by Slideshare, here!). Communitech has kindly invited me again to speak, this time at their entrepreneur group in Guelph, where I currently reside. It will take place from 6-8pm at SYNNEX Canada Ltd, 107 Woodlawn Rd W.

As a preamble to this talk, I just came across a very interesting blog post, recommended by Guelph’s very own Brydon of start-up Brainpark, arguing for the need to shift from a product development mindset to a customer development approach. I added some comments there too.

I look forward to seeing many Guelphites and having a good chat about this topic. Bring your war stories!

Canadian entrepreneurs canada, divide, entrepreneurship, Guelph, innovation, market development, marketers, product management, start-ups, tech divide, techies, venture