Lots of startups get stuck
before they get to Product-Market-Fit.

What would be the reasons?

Here are some, I see on a daily basis. They are related to issues with founders or market (in no particular order):

1) Founders haven't studied or trained on basic things of startups: idea validation, market validation, customer value-proposition, team-building, product building, basic finance, and total money required to do few iterations.
A: Work for a startup for a few years and learn.
2) Founders are solving a problem that they face in their daily life at home or work and start solving for themselves before checking whether there are others who care about the same problem. After building the product, they realize the market issue.
A: Idea validation failure
3) Too headstrong and think every potential customer can't imagine the value unless they experience the product. Hence, start building the product.
A: If you are deep and know you are at the same league as in Steve Jobs, this makes sense
4) Founders talk to few friends and colleagues and start building a product. After building the product, they realize there is no high demand for the product.
A: Spend month(s) on the problem and not on the solution.
5) Founders take too long to build a product and market changes. For eg, I still see consumer desktop web pitches v/s mobile in India.
A: Cocreate the product with a set of dedicated users or customers.
6) Founders are constantly tooling their product as they are not happy with what they have built and never take the product to market.
A: Co-create the product with friendly customers. At least 5 in enterprise and a group of 100+ in the consumer category.
7) Founders pick a very small and niche market that one cannot build a good and profitable business.
A: Understand market sizing/TAM. If I have to guess, more than 50% fail here.
8) Founders pick a niche and potentially profitable market, but not venture category. Founders think they can raise and burn, but fail to raise.
A: Understanding how angels and VCs think of categories and investment. U can always do frustrated tweets saying "VCs don't get it"...
9) Founders don’t do competitive analysis to understand why their product has a better value proposition than alternative solutions in the market.
A: Very common mistake. Spend 24 hours on Google and you will find every competitor. Benchmark them before you jump on your product.
10) Founders fight among themselves and give up.
A: Most of the founding team come together based on friendship rather than competency. In addition to friendship, there should be a massive respect for competency between each other.
11) Founders identify a great market and exceptional value proposition. But, fail to recruit high-quality product/UX/engineers in building a great product. Or fail to double down on the go2market and dole away an opportunity.
A: It is a sin, in my opinion. Stupidity. Frustrating
What else? There are many other failures, but, most of it is again related to founders OR market-related. Love to hear your feedback.

More from Startups

There are a *lot* of software shops in the world that would far rather have one more technical dependency than they'd like to pay for one of their 20 engineers to become the company's SPOF expert on the joys of e.g. HTTP file uploads, CSV parsing bugs, PDF generation, etc.


Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.

"Who is the prototypical client here?"

A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.

(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)

"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"

I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.
5 Micro Skills That Will Improve Your Life Drastically

// A THREAD //


Even the small things compound over time... and become huge.

And they become HUGE.

This is the list of small skills that will improve your life A LOT over time, you can't even imagine how much... before you give it a try.

I'll present the skills in form of mini challenges.


1. Type with all ten fingers 10 days - 10 mins in the morning.

Most of us spend a lot of our time behind the computer typing.

Yet, not many people know how to write with all ten fingers —> drastically faster.

You can learn it for free here:
https://t.co/ow2WTHrXBJ


2. Make at least one Zap

Zappier allows you to make micro workflows between the applications you use.

Let's say you have to calendars (work and normal) and you want to sync them all the time —> Zappier


2b. You send an email every month remind your customers to pay the maintenance fee + reminder them if they won't —> Zappier

You want an email notification every time someone edits a Google sheet —> Zappier

Basic version is free. @zapier

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दधीचि ऋषि को मनाही थी कि वह अश्विनी कुमारों को किसी भी अवस्था में ब्रह्मविद्या का उपदेश नहीं दें। ये आदेश देवराज इन्द्र का था।वह नहीं चाहते थे कि उनके सिंहासन को प्रत्यक्ष या परोक्ष रुप से कोई भी खतरा हो।मगर जब अश्विनी कुमारों ने सहृदय प्रार्थना की तो महर्षि सहर्ष मान गए।


और उन्होनें ब्रह्मविद्या का ज्ञान अश्विनि कुमारों को दे दिया। गुप्तचरों के माध्यम से जब खबर इन्द्रदेव तक पहुंची तो वे क्रोध में खड़ग ले कर गए और महर्षि दधीचि का सर धड़ से अलग कर दिया।मगर अश्विनी कुमार भी कहां चुप बैठने वाले थे।उन्होने तुरंत एक अश्व का सिर महर्षि के धड़ पे...


...प्रत्यारोपित कर उन्हें जीवित रख लिया।उस दिन के पश्चात महर्षि दधीचि अश्वशिरा भी कहलाए जाने लगे।अब आगे सुनिये की किस प्रकार महर्षि दधीचि का सर काटने वाले इन्द्र कैसे अपनी रक्षा हेतु उनके आगे गिड़गिड़ाए ।

एक बार देवराज इन्द्र अपनी सभा में बैठे थे, तो उन्हे खुद पर अभिमान हो आया।


वे सोचने लगे कि हम तीनों लोकों के स्वामी हैं। ब्राह्मण हमें यज्ञ में आहुति देते हैं और हमारी उपासना करते हैं। फिर हम सामान्य ब्राह्मण बृहस्पति से क्यों डरते हैं ?उनके आने पर क्यों खड़े हो जाते हैं?वे तो हमारी जीविका से पलते हैं। देवर्षि बृहस्पति देवताओं के गुरु थे।

अभिमान के कारण ऋषि बृहस्पति के पधारने पर न तो इन्द्र ही खड़े हुए और न ही अन्य देवों को खड़े होने दिया।देवगुरु बृहस्पति इन्द्र का ये कठोर दुर्व्यवहार देख कर चुप चाप वहां से लौट गए।कुछ देर पश्चात जब देवराज का मद उतरा तो उन्हे अपनी गलती का एहसास हुआ।