{"id":387,"date":"2016-05-23T18:48:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T17:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/?p=387"},"modified":"2017-05-09T09:17:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T08:17:01","slug":"whats-killing-your-startup-18-mistakes-to-avoid-1-single-founder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/2016\/05\/23\/whats-killing-your-startup-18-mistakes-to-avoid-1-single-founder\/","title":{"rendered":"What Mistakes Are Killing Your Startup? #1 Single Founder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently,\u00a0I posted the infographic below on my LinkedIn\u00a0profile<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0It generated thousands of shares and hundreds of comments<\/strong>, which proves there is an interested community who are actively seeking information on the topic. To follow-on on this, my next few posts will go into more detail\u00a0why those 18 mistakes are so deadly for startups<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"18-Mistakes-That-Kill-Startups\"<\/a>
Author: Mark Vital (http:\/\/fundersandfounders.com\/startup-mistakes\/). Click to enlarge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mistake #1: Single Founder<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As the Founder of the\u00a0Entrepreneurs\u2019 Organization<\/a>,\u00a0Verne Harnish<\/strong>\u00a0put it: \u201cDo you really believe you can be better alone than with a group of talented people around you? If the answer is yes,\u00a0then you are the problem!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

So let\u2019s look at the reasons behind going it alone.\u00a0If an entrepreneur is a single founder<\/strong>\u00a0this tends to be down to two things.\u00a0It is either a conscious decision, or the result of an inability to persuade cofounders to get on board with the project.<\/strong>\u00a0Both cases are bad news. Now let\u2019s go over the most common arguments I hear from entrepreneurs trying to justify why they are alone.<\/p>\n

The Gollum<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my treasure.\u00a0MY\u00a0treasure<\/strong>.\u201d Put slightly more eloquently, this translates as \u201cI want to retain control because I came up with the idea in the first place,\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t want to be ousted in the future,\u201d or \u201csomeone will steal my big idea,\u201d and so forth. This is a legitimate concern, nevertheless, we should really be asking ourselves: What is the goal in launching a startup?\u00a0The best way not to succeed is not to share: not sharing your idea, not sharing your goal, not sharing the project.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The CFO<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot pay a competitive salary.\u201d Be that as it may, is it really a reason not to work as a team?\u00a0Which brings us back to sharing \u2013 again.<\/strong>\u00a0When you start a business or jump in as an early collaborator in a startup, the only sure thing is that you will make less money than working in a big corporation. And that this will last for the unforeseen future \u2013 maybe even forever. So how can you attract talent to work with you?\u00a0How about giving share equity and vision a thought?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The All-star<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI am qualified to start a business.\u201d Good for you. You probably are \u2013 but can you really grow it alone?\u00a0A good entrepreneurial team needs alignment of interests and values with collaborators, the capacity to implement \u2013 and the right contacts along the value chain of the industry it is competing in.<\/strong>\u00a0On very rare occasions single individuals can hold all the technical capacities and commercial capacities to be successful in their hands. But if it is the case how long will it be before they burn-out?<\/p>\n

We mustn\u2019t fool ourselves with the fact that some entrepreneurs are now very important figures in the media.\u00a0Steve Jobs needed Steve Wosniak and Mike Makula to start Apple <\/span><\/a><\/strong>; and Larry Page and Sergey Brin needed Eric Schmidt to grow Google. And even Marc Zuckerberg didn\u2019t go it alone in the beginning.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not forget those key factors successful entrepreneurs always highlight;\u00a0you need somebody you trust to bounce ideas back and forth with, to suffer the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey\u00a0with<\/strong>; and someone humble enough to accept you are not perfect and you do not know it all. One person alone can only experience limited learning in limited time.\u00a0\u00a0For a startup what is crucial is the agility and speed to learn, pivot and implement. And alone, this takes so much more time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Posts of the series:<\/p>\n

#1 Single Founder<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

#2 Bad Location<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

#3 Marginal Niche<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

#4 Confusing an Accessible Market with a Potential One<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

#5 and #6:\u00a0Launching too Early\u2026 or too Late<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

#7: Fights Between Founders<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

#8:\u00a0Obstinacy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently,\u00a0I posted the infographic below on my LinkedIn\u00a0profile.\u00a0It generated thousands of shares and hundreds of comments, which proves there is an interested community who are actively seeking information on the topic. To follow-on on this, my next few posts will go into more detail\u00a0why those 18 mistakes are so deadly for startups. Mistake #1: Single […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1682,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[157,78196],"tags":[95626,89755,95627,80159],"coauthors":[103468],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","category-new-ventures","tag-common-mistakes","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-founder","tag-startup","megacategoria-mc-entrepreneurship"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1682"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}