12 ms·

Why 99% of Entrepreneurs Fail: Because they don't do anything

94 points by astrec 18y ago

jfornear 18y ago
I'm a type 2... I feel like I don't have the influence, following, or energy required to promote things after launching so I tend to give up and start something new.
- astrec 18y ago
  Perhaps you need to find the Steve to your Woz?
jhancock 18y ago
I can agree this is why 99% of "someone with an idea" does not convert the idea into a meaningful business. However, I prefer to qualify the term "entrepreneur" as someone that fully accepts the "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" rule.
- DannyDover 18y ago
  I had the same thought, its less the entrepreneurs and more the population as a whole. I do think most people are capable of at least trying to start a company. The biggest obstacle that keeps them from "doing anything" is intimidation (of how hard it is) and comfort in their current routine.
  - moe 18y ago
    Being in the process of launching an own company I can wholeheartly second both of your points. During our recruiting efforts we noticed that most people are mindboggingly risk averse, up to the point of irrationality. In one sentence they'll tell you how they've always wanted to start their own thing and how promising your idea sounds to them - and in the next they cop out because you can't offer them a 3yr contract with full salary and some sort of success guarantee on top...
    - cmos 18y ago
      The hiring process is definitely unique.. we often ended up with people who would instead make quirky lifestyle stipulations that were more important to them than money or security. Like being able to work from noon until whenever. Or not wearing shoes, ever. Or bringing their dogs to work. Oddly enough, because we started in a falling apart mansion the fact that we had a full kitchen and a washer and dryer was enough to convince a bunch of people. "You mean I can do laundry at work?" "yep" "wow!"
      - moe 18y ago
        Well, unfortunately the population of dog-loving barefeet coders does not entirely overlap with the population of rockstar programmers. But nonetheless our main criterions remain quality of code and ability to communicate in a meaningful way (asynchronously if their sleep-cycle requires it). If someone can deliver both of that then, frankly, he may run around naked all day as far as I am concerned. I have no reason to discriminate dog-loving nudists, as long as that doesn't negatively affect their contribution to our business objectives.
        cmos 18y ago
        Entirely correct. We did not get the best people. It probably cost us more money in the long run. But we were able to ship the product and survive. It can take years and years to find an amazing team of programmers that's a good fit. After 12 years we have, but in the beginning we just had to ship and get paid.
- jessep 18y ago
  True. But types 2 and 3 are working hard, just without focus.
vaksel 18y ago
pretty much just remember that there is no overnight success, and stick with your idea through thick and thin, no matter what. Granted...you need to put in some basic goals, i.e. if your startup grows at 1 user a month for a year..its probably time to quit.
- johnrob 18y ago
  The problem is, it's tough to distinguish "time to quit" from "giving up too early". In fact, I'm not sure there's always a difference between the two. That's why the rewards are so high for a success.
- jmatt 18y ago
  Unless that one user is a government or large corporation which is funding all future development. If this is the case just try to maintain your growth numbers! ;)
- eterno 18y ago
  I wouldnt say so. Even with that one user and thousands of failed users you might be on the verge of evolving your product to better suit market needs and gain usage. The biggest truth about entrepreneurship is that no-one knows. There is no authority - not your current users, not the 3-times successful serial entrepreneur not even Bill Gates. The only one who knows best is the entrepreneur himself - and that might not be much to bet your future on.
crxnamja 18y ago
no comment.
bprater 18y ago
I suspect that entrepreneurs fail because they don't ask good questions. Lack of focus is an unexplored question. Lack of motivation is an unexplored question. Hitting a stinging low after the great initial launch highs are an unexplored question. ("How could I make this process more enjoyable? What did I do wrong that got me here?")
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
anuraggoel 18y ago
I find it disturbing that the authoress seems to be motivated primarily by money, and does not mention this kind of motivation as the reason for a lot of startup failures.
- thomasmallen 18y ago
  "authoress" Seriously? "author"
  - anuraggoel 18y ago
    I just wanted to get my facts and grammar right :-) Facts: http://jessicamah.com/blog/?page_id=2 http://jessicamah.com/blog/?page_id=2 Grammar: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoress http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoress
    - thomasmallen 18y ago
      A word doesn't become proper by virtue of merely being defined... For what it's worth, my comment was on a PC bent. Nowadays, "waitress," "stewardess," etc. are frowned upon, and your use of "authoress" needlessly draws intention to the distinction. It's a clumsy word as well, which makes it seem that you find this distinction notable enough to decide against the far, far more common "author."
      - deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
      - anuraggoel 18y ago
        Wow, thanks. That's why I like HN. You learn something new every day.
      - astrec 18y ago
        Whether all those words are frowned upon would largely depend on dialect (Queen's, International, American etc.) and local custom. For example, I use waitress, stewardess and actress, but never authoress or manageress. It's probably quite baffling to someone for whom English is a secondary language.
ieatpaste 18y ago
stop reading hn and get back to work.
- brandonkm 18y ago
  Or maybe... read hn, learn some new things, then get to work.
  - eru 18y ago
    Stop pretending..
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
      - nopassrecover 18y ago
        Need to stop kidding yourself that you are learning on HN - it's entertainment.
        Xichekolas 18y ago
        Well, to be fair it's like 5% learning and ... 95% entertainment.
        eru 18y ago
        + 50% procrastination. Yes, I get more than 100% out of Hacker news!
        nadim 18y ago
        The two need not be mutually exclusive.
- joe_the_user 18y ago
  Maybe most entrepreneurs fail because success is a very hard problem? Picking the one great idea that can succeed is hard - even if you have many great ideas. Working hard in a way that focuses your effort is hard even if you work hard. Maybe 99% of generalizations fail because .... it is easy to generalize and hard to produce useful, clear understanding.
alain94040 18y ago
One of the best quotes from Scott Adams: "the difference between a bad idea and a great idea is that you're the author". It's so true. Everyone else thinks your startup idea doesn't make any sense. That's not a reason to give up. Listen politely to the feedback. Try to extract the few ounces of truth (your idea surely is not perfect, it can be tweaked to be made even better). But don't be discouraged by negative feedback. Keep coding. Stop polishing your Powerpoint deck. http://fairsoftware.net http://fairsoftware.net: have an idea for a business? Find co-founders!
- bayareaguy 18y ago
  alain94040: I'm not sure the "viral" fairsoftware.net link in each of your comments is against the guidelines of this site but I think you should stop doing that before other people start copying you. If everyone did this the quality of HN would go down and that would be really annoying. It's also unnecessary because if you post enough good comments people will see your link when they click on your userid to read them.
  - alain94040 18y ago
    Good point. I come from the old age of Usenet signatures, where proper etiquette said 4 lines was appropriate. Except they were displayed at the bottom of people's screens, not inline like threads nowdays (do I sound old enough now :-) I'm really not). I do have an opinion on signing (using at least one line at the end), because I believe it helps the conversation to know who said what. If all you read were anonymous comments, it would hurt the conversation. When I see the same name again and again in a thread, my brain automatically connects the dots and I follow the conversation better knowing that the same person is responding again, or a new person chimed in, etc. You could argue that the name of the writer is already mentioned at the top, but somehow I always seem to skip that part and rely on the bottom of a post to know who wrote it. Maybe it's because if I read a message til the end, it means I found it interesting. Only then do I want to see who wrote it. That would explain why I skip names in the header and expect it in the footer... Anyone has read good research on that topic?
    - 18y ago
jmtame 18y ago
perhaps reason #2: they are all off doing their own thing. get a bunch of them together in the same room, working on the same project. more consolidation people!
zandorg 18y ago
The site was so slow to render that I gave up almost immediately.
thetrumanshow 18y ago
99% have to fail so that success is more rewarding for the remaining 1%. If everyone is special, no one is. "Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." -- Mark Twain
- sielskr 18y ago
  At the time of my comment, my comment's parent has 4 points, so it is not only the author of the parent that I am responding to, but also those who upvoted the parent and those who have expressed similar sentiments here in the past. First, I think a person has to be a little crazy to spend all his time on a venture with a 99% chance of failure. No woman for example is going to stay in a committed relationship with a man who has a 99% chance of financial failure and poverty, so what do these one-percenters plan to do to get into or stay in a relationship: lie to their partners about a fundamental part of their financial reality? (And I think that most heterosexual men who do not even want to be in a committed relationship with a woman are a little crazy.) But probably these one-percenters are adults, and have the right to embark on this kind of career, even if I would not want it. Would the reader however want to be a business partner, employee or even a coworker of one of these one-percenters? I for one would prefer for my business partners, employees and coworkers to look for ways so that as many people as possible enjoy a prosperous life. I would prefer for my business partners, etc, to help to shape their industry and their profession in that direction. The most valuable things I own are my life, my freedom, my health and my education. Health includes things like enriching recreational activities and a full social life, and in expensive places like the Bay Area, that requires a certain level of income. Good educational environments do not come cheap either. But to maintain my life, my freedom, my health, etc, requires only a middle-class level of income: it does not require wild Netscape-scale personal success. Not that Netscape-scale personal success is evil or wrong, but again the most valuable things a human being owns do not require it. When I say this, I understand that risk and unequal financial outcomes are a natural and unavoidable part of the efficient organization of the economy. Also, I do not endorse socialistic means for equalizing financial outcomes, in which the government takes income from successful workers against their will and gives it to less successful workers. But when it can be done without decreasing the efficiency of the economy and by voluntary transactions, I think we should structure our industries and professions and markets and institutions so that an ordinary person willing to work hard can earn a good living with as little risk of lasting poverty as possible. In contrast, it seems to me that a significant fraction of the commentators here prefer winner-take-all contests even when there are alternatives that produce just as much total wealth. I for one will choose not to partner with that fraction of the community. Let me give an example of a way to help more people earn enough money to maintain and protect the most valuable things a person owns (his life, his health, etc). Founders can increase their odds of success if they have more information on what founders before them did and how successful those choices ended up being. So anything anyone does to share true information about that or encourage others to share true information about that will tend to increase the number of founders who can earn a decent living at this startup game.
ojbyrne 18y ago
I gave a talk today about my past experience, and someone asked me what the key quality to bring to a startup is, and I blathered on about "determination," because that's what popped into my head ... After, I realized that there was a slightly different word that actually captured the experience better. Fear. It's the best motivator of all. Perhaps it's the real reason startups thrive in the environments like the current one - because they have no choice.
pg 18y ago
Or more precisely, because they don't do anything users need. There are two ways that happens: by doing nothing, and by doing the wrong things.
- waleedka 18y ago
  In addition to that, some (many?) entrepreneurs build something users want and see their apps grow. But, then, they see their friends doing something else that's growing even faster. And, being optimists, decide that they can run two projects at the same time. So they launch a pet project so as not to miss out on that other opportunity. I've done it, and I know a lot of excellent entrepreneurs do it. The thing is, it's sometimes the right thing to do. My last pet project grew much faster than my main project, and it ended up being my main project. And I'm happy it happened that way. But there is no way to know in advance how it's going to go.
shuleatt 18y ago
I posted something very similar several days ago called "Finding the 2%"http://www.leveragingideas.com/2009/01/19/find-the-two-percent/ http://www.leveragingideas.com/2009/01/19/find-the-two-perce...
edw519 18y ago
yet they lack the capability (and even willpower) needed to see it through With enough willpower, you don't need capability.
known 18y ago
Entrepreneurs should be opportunists rather than ambitious to succeed.
smakz 18y ago
My favorite quote: "Nothing will work unless you do." Maya Angelou. Works on many levels - you have to keep your nose to the grind stone, take ownership of all the problems you have, especially as an entrepreneur. At the same time take care of yourself, because if you burn yourself out no one can replace you - which is bad for you and your business.

94 points by astrec 18y ago

I'm a type 2... I feel like I don't have the influence, following, or energy required to promote things after launching so I tend to give up and start something new.

astrec 18y ago
Perhaps you need to find the Steve to your Woz?

jhancock 18y ago

I can agree this is why 99% of "someone with an idea" does not convert the idea into a meaningful business. However, I prefer to qualify the term "entrepreneur" as someone that fully accepts the "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" rule.

DannyDover 18y ago
I had the same thought, its less the entrepreneurs and more the population as a whole. I do think most people are capable of at least trying to start a company. The biggest obstacle that keeps them from "doing anything" is intimidation (of how hard it is) and comfort in their current routine.
- moe 18y ago
  Being in the process of launching an own company I can wholeheartly second both of your points. During our recruiting efforts we noticed that most people are mindboggingly risk averse, up to the point of irrationality. In one sentence they'll tell you how they've always wanted to start their own thing and how promising your idea sounds to them - and in the next they cop out because you can't offer them a 3yr contract with full salary and some sort of success guarantee on top...
  - cmos 18y ago
    The hiring process is definitely unique.. we often ended up with people who would instead make quirky lifestyle stipulations that were more important to them than money or security. Like being able to work from noon until whenever. Or not wearing shoes, ever. Or bringing their dogs to work. Oddly enough, because we started in a falling apart mansion the fact that we had a full kitchen and a washer and dryer was enough to convince a bunch of people. "You mean I can do laundry at work?" "yep" "wow!"
    - moe 18y ago
      Well, unfortunately the population of dog-loving barefeet coders does not entirely overlap with the population of rockstar programmers. But nonetheless our main criterions remain quality of code and ability to communicate in a meaningful way (asynchronously if their sleep-cycle requires it). If someone can deliver both of that then, frankly, he may run around naked all day as far as I am concerned. I have no reason to discriminate dog-loving nudists, as long as that doesn't negatively affect their contribution to our business objectives.
      - cmos 18y ago
        Entirely correct. We did not get the best people. It probably cost us more money in the long run. But we were able to ship the product and survive. It can take years and years to find an amazing team of programmers that's a good fit. After 12 years we have, but in the beginning we just had to ship and get paid.
jessep 18y ago
True. But types 2 and 3 are working hard, just without focus.

vaksel 18y ago

pretty much just remember that there is no overnight success, and stick with your idea through thick and thin, no matter what. Granted...you need to put in some basic goals, i.e. if your startup grows at 1 user a month for a year..its probably time to quit.

johnrob 18y ago
The problem is, it's tough to distinguish "time to quit" from "giving up too early". In fact, I'm not sure there's always a difference between the two. That's why the rewards are so high for a success.
jmatt 18y ago
Unless that one user is a government or large corporation which is funding all future development. If this is the case just try to maintain your growth numbers! ;)
eterno 18y ago
I wouldnt say so. Even with that one user and thousands of failed users you might be on the verge of evolving your product to better suit market needs and gain usage. The biggest truth about entrepreneurship is that no-one knows. There is no authority - not your current users, not the 3-times successful serial entrepreneur not even Bill Gates. The only one who knows best is the entrepreneur himself - and that might not be much to bet your future on.

crxnamja 18y ago

no comment.

bprater 18y ago

I suspect that entrepreneurs fail because they don't ask good questions. Lack of focus is an unexplored question. Lack of motivation is an unexplored question. Hitting a stinging low after the great initial launch highs are an unexplored question. ("How could I make this process more enjoyable? What did I do wrong that got me here?")

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

anuraggoel 18y ago

I find it disturbing that the authoress seems to be motivated primarily by money, and does not mention this kind of motivation as the reason for a lot of startup failures.

thomasmallen 18y ago
"authoress" Seriously? "author"
- anuraggoel 18y ago
  I just wanted to get my facts and grammar right :-) Facts: http://jessicamah.com/blog/?page_id=2 http://jessicamah.com/blog/?page_id=2 Grammar: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoress http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoress
  - thomasmallen 18y ago
    A word doesn't become proper by virtue of merely being defined... For what it's worth, my comment was on a PC bent. Nowadays, "waitress," "stewardess," etc. are frowned upon, and your use of "authoress" needlessly draws intention to the distinction. It's a clumsy word as well, which makes it seem that you find this distinction notable enough to decide against the far, far more common "author."
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
    - anuraggoel 18y ago
      Wow, thanks. That's why I like HN. You learn something new every day.
    - astrec 18y ago
      Whether all those words are frowned upon would largely depend on dialect (Queen's, International, American etc.) and local custom. For example, I use waitress, stewardess and actress, but never authoress or manageress. It's probably quite baffling to someone for whom English is a secondary language.

ieatpaste 18y ago

stop reading hn and get back to work.

brandonkm 18y ago
Or maybe... read hn, learn some new things, then get to work.
- eru 18y ago
  Stop pretending..
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
    - nopassrecover 18y ago
      Need to stop kidding yourself that you are learning on HN - it's entertainment.
      - Xichekolas 18y ago
        Well, to be fair it's like 5% learning and ... 95% entertainment.
        eru 18y ago
        + 50% procrastination. Yes, I get more than 100% out of Hacker news!
        nadim 18y ago
        The two need not be mutually exclusive.
joe_the_user 18y ago
Maybe most entrepreneurs fail because success is a very hard problem? Picking the one great idea that can succeed is hard - even if you have many great ideas. Working hard in a way that focuses your effort is hard even if you work hard. Maybe 99% of generalizations fail because .... it is easy to generalize and hard to produce useful, clear understanding.

alain94040 18y ago

One of the best quotes from Scott Adams: "the difference between a bad idea and a great idea is that you're the author". It's so true. Everyone else thinks your startup idea doesn't make any sense. That's not a reason to give up. Listen politely to the feedback. Try to extract the few ounces of truth (your idea surely is not perfect, it can be tweaked to be made even better). But don't be discouraged by negative feedback. Keep coding. Stop polishing your Powerpoint deck. http://fairsoftware.net http://fairsoftware.net: have an idea for a business? Find co-founders!

bayareaguy 18y ago
alain94040: I'm not sure the "viral" fairsoftware.net link in each of your comments is against the guidelines of this site but I think you should stop doing that before other people start copying you. If everyone did this the quality of HN would go down and that would be really annoying. It's also unnecessary because if you post enough good comments people will see your link when they click on your userid to read them.
- alain94040 18y ago
  Good point. I come from the old age of Usenet signatures, where proper etiquette said 4 lines was appropriate. Except they were displayed at the bottom of people's screens, not inline like threads nowdays (do I sound old enough now :-) I'm really not). I do have an opinion on signing (using at least one line at the end), because I believe it helps the conversation to know who said what. If all you read were anonymous comments, it would hurt the conversation. When I see the same name again and again in a thread, my brain automatically connects the dots and I follow the conversation better knowing that the same person is responding again, or a new person chimed in, etc. You could argue that the name of the writer is already mentioned at the top, but somehow I always seem to skip that part and rely on the bottom of a post to know who wrote it. Maybe it's because if I read a message til the end, it means I found it interesting. Only then do I want to see who wrote it. That would explain why I skip names in the header and expect it in the footer... Anyone has read good research on that topic?
  - 18y ago

jmtame 18y ago

perhaps reason #2: they are all off doing their own thing. get a bunch of them together in the same room, working on the same project. more consolidation people!

zandorg 18y ago

The site was so slow to render that I gave up almost immediately.

thetrumanshow 18y ago

99% have to fail so that success is more rewarding for the remaining 1%. If everyone is special, no one is. "Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." -- Mark Twain

sielskr 18y ago
At the time of my comment, my comment's parent has 4 points, so it is not only the author of the parent that I am responding to, but also those who upvoted the parent and those who have expressed similar sentiments here in the past. First, I think a person has to be a little crazy to spend all his time on a venture with a 99% chance of failure. No woman for example is going to stay in a committed relationship with a man who has a 99% chance of financial failure and poverty, so what do these one-percenters plan to do to get into or stay in a relationship: lie to their partners about a fundamental part of their financial reality? (And I think that most heterosexual men who do not even want to be in a committed relationship with a woman are a little crazy.) But probably these one-percenters are adults, and have the right to embark on this kind of career, even if I would not want it. Would the reader however want to be a business partner, employee or even a coworker of one of these one-percenters? I for one would prefer for my business partners, employees and coworkers to look for ways so that as many people as possible enjoy a prosperous life. I would prefer for my business partners, etc, to help to shape their industry and their profession in that direction. The most valuable things I own are my life, my freedom, my health and my education. Health includes things like enriching recreational activities and a full social life, and in expensive places like the Bay Area, that requires a certain level of income. Good educational environments do not come cheap either. But to maintain my life, my freedom, my health, etc, requires only a middle-class level of income: it does not require wild Netscape-scale personal success. Not that Netscape-scale personal success is evil or wrong, but again the most valuable things a human being owns do not require it. When I say this, I understand that risk and unequal financial outcomes are a natural and unavoidable part of the efficient organization of the economy. Also, I do not endorse socialistic means for equalizing financial outcomes, in which the government takes income from successful workers against their will and gives it to less successful workers. But when it can be done without decreasing the efficiency of the economy and by voluntary transactions, I think we should structure our industries and professions and markets and institutions so that an ordinary person willing to work hard can earn a good living with as little risk of lasting poverty as possible. In contrast, it seems to me that a significant fraction of the commentators here prefer winner-take-all contests even when there are alternatives that produce just as much total wealth. I for one will choose not to partner with that fraction of the community. Let me give an example of a way to help more people earn enough money to maintain and protect the most valuable things a person owns (his life, his health, etc). Founders can increase their odds of success if they have more information on what founders before them did and how successful those choices ended up being. So anything anyone does to share true information about that or encourage others to share true information about that will tend to increase the number of founders who can earn a decent living at this startup game.

ojbyrne 18y ago

I gave a talk today about my past experience, and someone asked me what the key quality to bring to a startup is, and I blathered on about "determination," because that's what popped into my head ... After, I realized that there was a slightly different word that actually captured the experience better. Fear. It's the best motivator of all. Perhaps it's the real reason startups thrive in the environments like the current one - because they have no choice.

pg 18y ago

Or more precisely, because they don't do anything users need. There are two ways that happens: by doing nothing, and by doing the wrong things.

waleedka 18y ago
In addition to that, some (many?) entrepreneurs build something users want and see their apps grow. But, then, they see their friends doing something else that's growing even faster. And, being optimists, decide that they can run two projects at the same time. So they launch a pet project so as not to miss out on that other opportunity. I've done it, and I know a lot of excellent entrepreneurs do it. The thing is, it's sometimes the right thing to do. My last pet project grew much faster than my main project, and it ended up being my main project. And I'm happy it happened that way. But there is no way to know in advance how it's going to go.

shuleatt 18y ago

I posted something very similar several days ago called "Finding the 2%"http://www.leveragingideas.com/2009/01/19/find-the-two-percent/ http://www.leveragingideas.com/2009/01/19/find-the-two-perce...

edw519 18y ago

yet they lack the capability (and even willpower) needed to see it through With enough willpower, you don't need capability.

known 18y ago

Entrepreneurs should be opportunists rather than ambitious to succeed.

smakz 18y ago

My favorite quote: "Nothing will work unless you do." Maya Angelou. Works on many levels - you have to keep your nose to the grind stone, take ownership of all the problems you have, especially as an entrepreneur. At the same time take care of yourself, because if you burn yourself out no one can replace you - which is bad for you and your business.