Comments on: Why do we Startup?

By: Kevin Rodrigues

Kevin Rodrigues — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:18:55 +0000

Startups may fail but the point is not to stop at that point Failure is just a temporary step for finally achieving success. I suppose startups are kind of supposed to fail. They are a part of an experiment to see how things will be. It is kind of like prototype software development. Once a certain point is reached, it is time to check why failure happened and reinvent yourself to move in a better direction to achieve success.

By: silky

silky — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:34:36 +0000

Niyaz, statistically speaking, if your startup succeeds you have caused the failure of another 9! How can you live with that!

PS: I think you may do well to ignore Paul Graham, but that is personal opinion. Regardless, I of course wish you luck!

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:13:00 +0000

Maybe it just has to do with the way things are done. We’re on our third year, have been profitable from the first year and my two boss still do a lot of administrative work that would be done by professionals in a more mature company. It still feels like a startup.

About the 9/10 stat, it looks like an estimation just to get a broad idea. I also think that by failure, they mean the startup just stops at some point, not that they lost millions of dollars worth of investments. I’m sure a lot of people starting companies try it for a few months, mostly as a side job (which is more of a full-time side job along with a full-time main job) and eventually give up because they’re tired or feel they’re not making progress. The word failure makes it look like the companies went bankrupt which I’m sure is not the case with 9 out of 10 startups.

By: Niyaz PK

Niyaz PK — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:23:09 +0000

I took the statistics from one of Paul Graham's famous essays:

While perhaps 9 out of 10 startups fail, the one that succeeds will pay the founders more than 10 times what they would have made in an ordinary job. ...The 1/10 success rate for startups is a bit of an urban legend. It's suspiciously neat. My guess is the odds are slightly worse.

Steve Blanks is a serial entrepreneur and professor at Stanford University. He says in one of his essays:

...Yet at the end of the day even with all these processes 9 out of 10 of new products are failures...

I would argue that a startup has a maximum of 3-4 years before it stops getting called a startup. After that it either becomes a serious (and profitable) business or a failure.

By: TheAnand

TheAnand — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:49:16 +0000

Same question as Mike. I am interested in knowing the souce of 1:10 ratio.

@Mike, the time window is infinity. Reliance calls itself Indias biggest startup

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:05:55 +0000

How is the “9 out of 10 fail” stat calculated? I’m interested because I got hired by a startup 2 years ago and its going quite well right now. What’s the time window for a startup to be considered a startup?

I think the most common point of failure is forgetting about all the time administrating the startup is going to take. It’s easy building something great, but using your time wisely is different.