I’ve never seen a startup that was a total failure. Startup founders are brilliant, extremely talented professionals that also work very hard and are fully dedicated to their vision. In the beginning, these founders are consistently able to generate a sequence of small but concrete achievements. In general, startups fail because they are not able to scale. They can’t evolve from the small wins to the big wins.

What are these small wins?
– Creating a solid founding team
– The ability to deploy an MVP
– Great investor deck and business plan
– Being accepted in an accelerator
– Bringing the first paying customers
– Raising funds from Angel investors

Examples of the reasons these smalls wins never become a big win:
– The founding team lacks critical skills, such as business development
– The MVP is elegant, but there is no real technological innovation
– The business plan is extremely optimistic
– Founders are too busy to benefit from the accelerator
– The first customers are early-adopters that do not represent real users
– The founders take the money from the investors but ignore their advice

In general, all founders look with admiration at the huge success stories, the Unicorns. Instead, they should be talking with people who failed. They can teach you some very important lessons, explaining you what were their mistakes.

I think that it is easier to avoid the mistakes of founders who failed than reproducing the great success stories of the billionaires.