Loic Le Meur’s inspirational tips

In this video, Loic Le Meur is very prolific and pragmatic. Web entrepreneurs should keep in mind the many advices given here, even if it does not always look as the more convenient path:

You may find a written transcription and some extra links on his original blog post.

Why startups fail

Here is an interesting post regarding some reasons why startups might fail. They can look obvious but any entrepreneur should be aware of them.

Clairvoyance & Simplicité

For those who would be lazy reading the full article (although not that long), I have drawn the following outlines :

  • They spend too much on sales and marketing before they’re ready
  • The market outpaces the startup’s ability to execute
  • There is no Entrepreneur
  • The market takes too long to develop
  • Failure risks are not properly identified

And I would personally add a few more:

  • They fear to meet their market 
  • They wait for their product to be perfect before starting selling it
  • There is no innovation, or it can be copied too easily

Regarding these potential factors of failure, or if properly avoided, factors of success, I wonder where a promising startup company like Goojet will go. Millions of euros have been invested and they have been developing their product for one year and a half, but they only went into public beta a few days ago, while the field is highly competitive and there is a strong need for network externalities (the more people the better), especially since their revenue model is based on a large user base.

Would the best outcome for them be to sell their technology/platform before other players catch them up (and they can make tens of millions that way, which is not bad for a company without clients!), or to meet the challenge and keep on faster with a much more reactive and adaptative strategy? You should not doom a company unless you are shortselling it…