1. Single Founder
2. Bad Location
3. Marginal Niche
“If you make anything good, you’re going to have competitors, so you may as well face that. You can only avoid competition by avoiding good ideas.”
4. Derivative Idea
5. Obstinacy
“Startups are more like science, where you need to follow the trail wherever it leads.[…]
So don’t get too attached to your original plan, because it’s probably wrong.”
6. Hiring Bad Programmers
7. Choosing the Wrong Platform
8. Slowness in Launching
9. Launching Too Early
10. Having No Specific User in Mind
“When designing for other people you have to be empirical. You can no longer guess what will work; you have to find users and measure their responses.”
11. Raising Too Little Money
12. Spending Too Much
13. Raising Too Much Money
14. Poor Investor Management
“As a founder, you have to manage your investors. You shouldn’t ignore them, because they may have useful insights. But neither should you let them run the company. That’s supposed to be your job. If investors had sufficient vision to run the companies they fund, why didn’t they start them?”
15. Sacrificing Users to (Supposed) Profit
16. Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty
“If you’re going to attract users, you’ll probably have to get up from your computer and go find some. It’s unpleasant work, but if you can make yourself do it you have a much greater chance of succeeding.”
17. Fights Between Founders
“Fights between founders are surprisingly common. About 20% of the startups we’ve funded have had a founder leave.”
18. A Half-Hearted Effort
