Startup Problems

SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD

INSTEAD OF SCRATCHING YOUR ITCH

The Problems With Alternative Startup Material

Influencing, Affecting, And Hindering Startups

Books, Podcasts, Guides, Tool-Kits, Frameworks... ISSUES

UNUSABLE LEVEL OF DETAIL

Where's The "How-To" Bit?

Inspirational fluff, endless anecdotes, and SEO-c**p, alongside bulls**t instructions like "Now do some marketing". Not ignoring the sound-bites of successful founders blinkered by survivorship bias. They may as well recommend you use Midas's middle finger.

Unasable Details
Chaning The Frame

YOU TOO CAN GET THE SAME RESULTS

If You Use My Secret Whatever... But You Won't

Great results have you got salivating. But you lack contextual appreciation so you'll blindly copy it without any innate understanding. When you do get the context, you realize similar results were never on the cards. But hey, you’re in their funnel. That’s a win-win in their book. Which you can purchase from their website.

Excessive Focus On The Product

STARTUPS FAIL FOR MANY REASONS

And Not Just No Market Need

No market need is only one reason, yet we have lop-sided product-based approaches. What about the other landmines such as how to find customers, sell to customers, market to customers? You’ll have to navigate past them as well.

Startups Fail
Founders Wear Many Hats

FOUNDERS WEAR MANY HATS

Research Hat, Marketing Hat, Sales Hat, Jimmy Hat...

You know you have to make something people want. But you also have to make people want something. Build and market have to go hand-in-hand, alongside a multitude of other things. Each hat is a career in its own right, but you’ll have to wear them all.

Dubious Experiments Questionable 'Validation'

FAIL FAST - LEARN SLOW

No, Learn The Right Things Fast

When the objective is to fail fast, you can do that very quickly indeed with any shot in the dark. Bumbling around tactic-to-tactic like Inspector Clouseau is not better than doing nothing. How about putting in the time and effort into something that has a fighting chance to pass instead of fail? And if you do fail, do it within a framework, that takes you a step closer to passing at a later date.

Failing Fast Learing Slowly
Out Of The Building Too Soon

BLINKERED VALIDATION

Attempting To Validate Too Many Things In One Go

Validate with a landing page and Google Ads to drive traffic? So, you are attempting to validate market-demand, as well as the problem, the audience, the solution, the channel, the content on the channel, the targeting factors, taking into account buyer intent doesn’t exclusively mean early adopters, to name some of the things. Experiments are good, but leave the dubious experiments to Dr.Frankenstein.

Not Fully Taking The Effects Of Time Into Account

SHIP EARLY AND MINIMUM

Oblivious To The Passage Of Time

Markets evolve, competitors multiply and audiences expect more. You can ship too early. Take into account the passage of time, and that minimum is a rising expectation we have to meet. An MVP in a mature or growing market where the market has moved onto the Early Majority, where the MVP doesn't provide a novel competitive edge will fail.

Shipping Too Early
Out Of The Building Too Soon

GETTING OUT OF THE BUILDING TOO SOON

Fishing Instead Of Experimenting

An open mind doesn’t mean an empty mind, otherwise, you won’t have the context nor level of knowledge to appreciate what you find. Some facts are undoubtedly outside the building, but you need to get to the right people, and probe in the right manner with a solid hypothesis.

IGNORING EARLY ADOPTER REQUIREMENTS

Early Adopters Don't Want A Better Mousetrap

Early Adopters are not interested in your better mousetrap, nor are they looking to only have their problem solved. They are looking for a novel innovation that propels them beyond their peers. Furthermore, in a market that has entered the mainstream, your better mousetrap means your early users are not the Early Adopters, but rather, the Early Majority.

Early Users Are Not Always Early Adopters

Undoubtedly Fantastic Stuff Shared By A Few

BRILLIANT ACTIONABLE STUFF

But Narrow In Scope

Fantastic resources shared by brilliant minds that go deep, but are narrow in scope. So you’re putting a jigsaw puzzle together, not knowing if the parts contribute correctly to the targeted whole.

Micro Macro
Macro Micro

SCATTERGUN TACTICS & PROCESSES

Not Contained Within An Overall Strategy Nor System

A lack of congruency between macro and micro-goals can result in doing tasks that don’t lead to the desired objective, or even lead you astray. Like tactics oblivious to strategy, and orphaned processes not housed in a system.

Incubate Your Mind So You'll Stop

Blindly Copying Tips & Tactics, Hoping To Find A Magic Bullet

Blindly Copying

Prematurely Implementing Hacks Cutting Out What You Need To Know

Prematurely Hacking

Inappropriate Methods So You're Trying To Run Before You Can Walk

Inappropriate Methods

There Are A Few Holistic Resources

That Cover Idea To Launch

Steps No Structure
Although upon closer inspection they are gateway collateral into an ecosystem of videos, courses, workshops, worksheets, etc, that enables a holistic approach. Collectively, you can call it a system. But your data is all over the place.

Scattered Tools - Scattered Validated Data

Online and offline drives, documents, spreadsheets, to-do apps, project management apps, wiki’s, the list is long. You may even be using multiple SaaS solutions, incompatible pieces monstrously stitched together, your FrankenSaaStein if you will. But your data is scattered, spread out, siloed.

You’re meant to learn in this stage, but the application of what you learn is diminished, plagued by inefficiencies, and riddled with confusion. The maximum value from your data is not being obtained, if indeed you even know of the other places it can be used.

MVP v2 No Longer Available, MVP v3 Currently Being Developed

Don't Scratch Your Head Like You Got Nits

No, Scratch Your Itch Like You Got Fleas