“Ideas are a dime a dozen; the difference is in the execution,” Cajide notes. She should know: Her start-up went through four different business models before finally calling it quits.
That brings us to our next sign that something might be amiss…
Failure sign No. 2: Your vision’s been twisted out of your control
Blurtt started out as a place where you could pay to create a custom physical postcard from your phone and have it posted. A year later, it shifted its model to being a free service supported by ads on the back of each printed postcard.
A year after that, the company pivoted again and became a “mobile platform of micro-gifting and greeting cards”. Soon thereafter, it tossed that idea aside and tried to convince people to download its app for creating digital blurtts – basically images with text-based captions stamped on top.
“In the end, the passion and magic was lost,” Cajide says. “Remember why you started this in the first place and never lose sight of it, because once it becomes something you are not happy doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
Speaking of which, remember Secret? It was an anonymous message-sharing tool that was all the rage among Silicon Valley insiders for a few minutes in 2014. It was also a start-up with serious money under its belt: a valuation of more than $100 million at its peak.
But all that cash couldn’t keep the train running. After struggling to deal with complaints of bullying and baseless rumourmongering (who would’ve thought it would happen on an anonymous message-sharing app?) – and simultaneously facing a troubling trend of declining use – the company shut down and returned its money to investors after a mere 16 months on the market.
Secret went through several evolutions along the way, shifting its design and philosophy to try to address complaints and keep everyone happy. In the end, its co-founder, David Byttow, said the start-up was no longer the entity he had set out to build.
“Secret does not represent the vision I had when starting the company,” he wrote, “so I believe [shutting down is] the right decision for myself, our investors, and our team.”
A loss of original vision was also blamed for the collapse of ProtoExchange, an outsourcing marketplace for hardware engineering, as well as for the downfall of Digital Royalty, a social media strategy start-up that underwent “sizable shifts” in the months leading up to its shutdown.
“Some of these shifts were in our control and some were not,” its founder, Amy Jo, eulogised. “In order to honour our core values, which have been the epicentre of our culture, we have decided to hang up our crown.”
Failure sign No. 3: You aren’t ready for success
Some start-ups have stellar ideas but lack the resources or know-how to execute them.
Ask Martin Erlic, whose UDesign went from promising new concept to kaput old company in the span of a single year.
The idea sounds solid: UDesign was an app that’d make it simple to create your own pattern and use it on a custom piece of clothing. But instead of hiring experienced programmers, Erlic and his partners in crime decided to do the dirty work themselves.
“What ended up happening was that we spent everything we could have spent on polishing the product… on marketing instead,” he explains. “We thought we could trick people now and make up for it later. Wrong.”
Flash without function – an age-old tale. It’s one Attila Szigeti, founder of ratemyspeech.co, also knows well.
“We only had a crude prototype but no amazing product, and we couldn’t attract [a] considerable number of users,” he recalls.
Some start-ups don’t even get that far. Jeremy Bell’s former company, Wattage, was supposed to make it easy for anyone to come up with an idea for an electronic device – dragging and dropping components like buttons, sensors, speakers, and displays into an online creation tool – then have the gadget manufactured and delivered in a matter of days.
Yet again, it was a cool concept without the legs to hold it up.
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