Comments on: Startup Mistakes by Software and Tech Companies

By: Mike Harris

Mike Harris — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:27:59 +0000

Great article Phil. In my work with startups I’ve found the following strategy model helps to surface critical issues quickly:

1. What are the trends?
2. What’s driving them?
3. What are my competitors doing about them?
4. What are we doing about them?
5. What could we be doing with the trends to increase profits?

By: David

David — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:28:51 +0000

A good document for start ups. All the right elements are there with fellow comments. The skills required for a small Co would have to be Sales oriented personality with considerable experience in the field being sold, has some financial knowledge with P&L BS & Cashflow with the ability to manage people.
Its crucial to have sufficient capital to start with but one should additionally able to recognise over capitalisation.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:28:15 +0000

Simon, I agree being an interim gives you a great base for your own startup. You see so many things–many of them bad!

By: Simon Marks

Simon Marks — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:42:20 +0000

This is a really good sanity check for what to look for, and in starting C-Caller.com most of them came our way. Thankfully nothing has blown up in our face. So we are still on roughly the course we planned, over budget, behind time with less complete market coverage than we would like for our service still waiting to for our big break – but still in there with a chance.

The really encouraging thing about your piece is that it hasn’t flagged up anything that we hadn’t anticipated, so hopefully there will be no nasty surprises.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that having been an interim since 1996 I have been privileged to see lots of business models in different business cycle phases so was able to apply lessons learned to my own start-up. Interims are also more resilient and adaptable which also helps.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:21:20 +0000

Nikolai,

Thanks for your comments. With respect to buggy software, you are right, it is a delicate balancing act. All software has bugs. It’s like bacteria in your body; you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) get rid of all of them, but it’s very important to get rid of those that can kill you! The one thing I can say is that I find it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between software with some bugs and “buggy” software. It’s ok to have a few bugs which show up in odd circumstances. And certainly you don’t need to have included every last feature the market might ever need prior to going to market. But if the code is truly buggy, it’s a real mistake to release it. You only have one chance to make a first impression.

By: Nikolai

Nikolai — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:06:16 +0000

Great article! A lot of this speaks to what we went through & continue to overcome in our own startup. One thing I worry about, is the last one regarding the release of a buggy product. Personally, I think it’s better for a startup to release a buggy product than to spend to long perfecting a product that may need to be drastically changed once it’s in the market, anyways. Then again, I’m sure it’s all a delicate balancing act, dependent on both product and target market. Thanks for the advice!

By: Bob Thomas

Bob Thomas — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:19:18 +0000

Good advice, but not just for startups. I’ve seen some of these mistakes in established companies. The most common is shipping buggy product with the attitude that you’ll fix it later. Meanwhile the customer struggles with an inferior product, and the product gets a bad reputation. A product with buggy reputation causes a lot more work for Product Managers and Sales.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:31:06 +0000

Sheshu, this is a great comment. The moment you actually get started the business plan is often no longer worth the paper its printed on. Being flexible and agile is critical in a startup environment.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:29:34 +0000

Bruce, excellent point, timing is a huge risk.

By: Seshu

Seshu — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:17:35 +0000

Great article. Adding to the above comment is considering Business Plan as a static document rather than a dynamic or a green document. One has to constantly revisit the BP as this document was created in vacuum (assuming that it was created before the product is even out) and with great many assumptions. Once the execution starts that is when the assumptions have to be validated and the model has to be tweaked to meet the realities of the world.