STARTUP SPECIAL ...................18 big mistakes that could kill your startup

18 big mistakes that could kill your startup

Business Insider India lists the 18 biggest startup mistakes for you to avoid (with some help from the guys at Funders and Founders).

Single Founder

As a single founder you have little chances of securing big funding. It's no coincidence that founders who succeeded did so as a team.

Bad Location

You can change everything about an apartment except its location. Similarly, if your startup is in a bad location, you can't change that.

Marginal Niche

If you choose an obscure niche, your startup would end up in a corner. If you're afraid of competition, this is not the way to go about it.

Derivative Idea

Remember, tomorrow's Google may be nothing like today's Google.

Obstinacy

Obstinacy Inability to adapt kills startups left, right and center.

Hiring Bad Programmers

Exceptional programmers are always in short supply. Hire good ones.

Slow Launch

The longer you delay the launch, the more you delay getting the answer whether your startup should exist.

Launching Too Early

Launch too early and you may be completely unprepared to handle anything

Choosing the Wrong Platform

How fast you scale would determine whether your startup lives or dies. On the wrong platform scalability will be a problem.

Raising Too Little Money 

With too little money you may not be able to do all that you wanted to to their full potential.

Spending Too Much

Spend too much before you grow enough, and you're broke.

Having No Specific User in Mind

If you think somewhere someone will be interested in your product, you need to know who that is.

Raising Too Much Money

Raising too much can make you feel like a success even before you did anything useful. At the end of the day it's users you want to impress.

Sacrificing Users to Profit

You can always make money. This cannot be said about making users happy. You need to make something they want.

Poor Investor Management

If the choice is between making investors or users happy, always choose the latter. If the user is happy, your investors will make money.

Not Wanting to Get Your Hands Dirty

Go out and meet people. You can't solve all your problems with coding.

Fights Between Founders

Founder conflict is very common, and it can have lasting impacts.

A Half-hearted Effort

A lack of determination to see your startup idea through to the end spells disaster

ETR