Starting your own business can be one of the most exciting times of your life, but can be one of the worst if not done correctly. According to Forbes nine out of every ten startups fail. Soak that in for a few moments, and then ask yourself are you ready to be a part of that statistic. Notice I did not say which part of that statistic you will be a part of, I’ll leave that up to you to decide. However, if you do end up being a part of the nine then remember this state by Charles F. Kettering who called failures “finger posts on the road to achievement.” Additionally, one of the greatest inventors of all time Thomas Edison stated, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.” As you make mistakes, or fail in your business, learn from it and use those mistakes as stepping stones to success. To help mitigate those mistakes and help you on your path to success there are a lot of resource to get you started. One program that we have guest lecturer in is the Startup Entrepreneur Academy, which has different learning modules from how to setup your business correctly to marketing your idea to the right people. In addition, to programs like this look to businesses that have failed and why they have failed. For Example, Dijiwan, a digital marketing startup, leaders wrote “A good product idea and a strong technical team are not a guarantee of a sustainable business. One should not ignore the business process and issues of a company because it is not their job. It can eventually deprive them from any future in that company.” By overlooking key aspects of their business, and only focusing on each individual’s task Dijiwan failed within its first year of business. Stories like this are a dime a dozen. Within a startup everyone should work together as one unit, tasks will overlap, but it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure things are getting done. If one individual is not pulling their weight then it could tank the whole company even before it has any legs to stand on.
Another major reason why startups fail is that they do not know their market, and there is a lack of a market for its product. “CB Insights recently parsed 101 post-mortem essays by startup founders to pinpoint the reasons they believe their company failed. On Thursday the company crunched the numbers to reveal that the number-one reason for failure, cited by 42% of polled startups, is the lack of a market need for their product.” What a lot of these companies live by is the Steve Jobs concept in which he states, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Sure your business may be the next Apple, or Uber, but make sure you have sufficient capital, and the know-how to get your business started, which are another two major reason why companies have failed.
As you contemplate your business and your business’s goals to success remember this, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Thomas Edison