Why do so many startups fail?

review.chicagobooth.edu | The reality for more than two-thirds of entrepreneurs is that their startups will go out of business within the first few years. Why do so many startups fail, and how do you foster a startup culture without blinding people to the harsh realities of entrepreneurship? Hal Weitzman is joined by Chicago Booth's Scott Meadow, Waverly Deutsch, and Craig Wortmann (now with Northwestern University) in a panel discussion.

[@ericknkonya5682]

My take from listening to the discussion: 1. Do your homework when it comes to the business you want to start (What the panel is discussing ideally) 2. Learn along the way as you do the job and quickly adopt. 3. It's okay to Fail but what is most important repeat 1&2 with another business, but this time you have one valuable item to the puzzle "THE EXPERIENCE" Just my thoughts though

[@bubbleman1081]

A lot of startups simply don't have good ideas. It is okay to dream big, but also make sure that the dream is realistic.

[@puluzo]

agree. People tend to be emotionally addiced to their idea which most of the time it's bad idea.

[@Professional_Youtube_Commenter]

they are full of "good ideas", but ideas dont translate to stuff people will pay money for.

[@adamlee9347]

lol that's such a stereotypical view of entrepreneurship, which is wrong. Execution Team Timing Marketing Distribution are just as important as the idea. Facebook and MySpace had the same idea.

[@olivergloor567]

@@adamlee9347 MySpace was also very valuable for a long time and set the path forward. However, sometimes competition is hard and you're losing to it.

[@adamlee9347]

Oliver - yeah you lose the competition if your competitor does a better job at the things I mentioned above

[@robch4414]

Product (idea) blindness. Too many start-ups forget they are building a business, a company, because what excites the founders and consumes their time is bringing their idea, the product, into being. The (yawn) basics of ensuring that the business is well-run always comes second.

[@11219tt]

These type of things are always frustrating because they’re talking about very specific essentially unicorns. I consider every single tech start up that disrupts something a unicorn. There’s thousands of businesses across America who do their daily grind install plumbing do carpentry, and make a successful living off of that. None of them sold their company for thousands millions of dollars they’re just entrepreneurs at heart I worked at a company for 10 years. It was at most three of us. Every single year we pulled in $300,000. Did we want to grow? Yes. Did we? No. Did we gain paychecks and support our lifestyle? Yes. We weren’t famous we weren’t technologically advanced. We are just on our grind doing our thing.

[@nikolaradakovic5050]

and none of these experts ever founded and grown any company

[@yonoume8747]

Mate. Just because someone has not founded or created a company, doesn't mean they can become Knowledgeable at studying the bits and pieces of nooks and cranny in the meniscal details in order to understand it and share it as a well-read person. because of it, these type of people duties is to understand it not experience it.

[@victorsuarez3]

Yeah, it's like college all over again...

[@laroyrichardson]

So true. So much easier to be a spectator than a practitioner.

[@cecpower7799]

Waverly Deutch goes in-depth well. she is a well detail oriented teacher

[@DheerajBhaskar]

The interviewer is consistently good across the interviews I've seen

[@Yuchub33]

One of the best videos Ive seen about entrepreneurship, I want to be an entrepreneur in the future but im currently looking for experience and money of course in a regular job Also dont compare yourselves with steve jobs and bill gates, theres a lot of support behind them even if it is not apparent, environment, luck and family can affect your startup

[@ozzyfromspace]

Start with Why - Simon Sinek

[@rickyeckhardt]

Damn. That Twitter comment hit hard 6 years later!

[@Shazzyhtown]

excellent session. I hope every young entrepreneur pays attention to what was said. we are experiencing a startup craze, but not enough education on what it really takes to launch and grow one.

[@MB561]

Shazzy1228 that's what boards and bringing in execs are for. Duh. Everyone does it. No one said the creative founder has sales, marketing, mba skills etc. That's what a TEAM is for. Not sure why you don't get that but your comment suggest you think founders go at it themselves forever. Of course not.

[@ajeethsuryash5123]

Very productive time spent

[@sarathchandranpj]

am I the only one feels like they started with subject why startup fails and went to far away from that...???🤔

[@N0die]

Well meaning ppl, hire on talent. which results in an insular cult of brand that flourishes off interested parties who’ve pooled their capitol for the benefit of said well meaning ppl after that point, the thing these things become are a matter of the talent brought onboard. Inconveniently there are startups rather talented at the acquisition of attracting candidates to hedge against their failure rate.

[@McRyach]

Waverly Deutch talking about very interesting things. Thanks for the video, super useful.

[@victoradatsi256]

point of correction , maybe its easy to get funded in the US and Europe but not in africa. So many startups here cannot even get $1000 of investment so what are you talking about as it's easy to get funded @chicago booth review

[@bored666able]

Great discussion. I'm taking down notes :)

[@marcusdavenport1590]

Don't let any of these people invest in your company

[@Zakariah1971]

(1) Business formation is wrong (NOT Inc., LLC yes not Inc.) (2) Funding (Take non-dilutive seed funding like DoD, NIH, NCI, NSF, versus dilutive funding like a VC firm or bank) QED

[@ABC-uy4fw]

Stanford university entrepreneurs are beating University of Chicago Entrepreneurs. There is even a Stanford professor that is worth $7 billion. University of Chicago is becoming like a community college with these Professors.

[@RohitKumar-ku4nh]

Golden Knowledge

[@emperorsean1]

Also none of these startups are paying people a decent wage. Im 30 and i was in a startup i was only getting paid a crappy €10 an hr for 30 hrs and i did more hrs then that. Also its difficult to get apprentiships. I apply and i dont get any responses

[@SnoopyDoofie]

While they all gave some good advice, I seriously question the depth of their knowledge. Are any of them multi-millionaires? Aside from the one who is an angel investor, the others are all academics. If I want to get advice from someone about how not to crash my startup, I'll look to those who have started one and preferably someone who has failed multiple times before they had success.

[@JulyFourth1776]

SnoopyDo Why so negative? Why so cynical? They are someone who knows a lot about this. So listen

[@SnoopyDoofie]

Unless you've actually built a company, you know nothing.

[@naftalibendavid]

I love Wendy!

[@ozzyfromspace]

I think more startups need to bootstrap

[@medi7710]

Not impressed at all. Quite a few responses that lacked logical reasoning.

[@marcusdavenport1590]

I wish I could give this 2 thumbs down.

[@messaroundaccount1193]

Why? Are these guys untrustworthy or talking crap? I don't know you don't mind telling me? Thanks

[@DheerajBhaskar]

1 reason is because none of them have started a startup. 2 there seems to be a lot of confirmation bias happening ie they're finding patterns they want to find as we can find a lot of counter examples to their patterns 3 this seems like a laundry list of items they want in an entrepreneur or they they want them to do. This is without regards to resource constraints. Everyone wants best team, lots of capital, few competitors, etc. How do you go about getting there is the question these people didn't answer. Maybe they themselves don't have the answers