
Why Startups Fail
A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success
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Narrated by:
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Robert Fass
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By:
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Tom Eisenmann
About this listen
If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail.
"Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading." (Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times best-selling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way)
Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it.
So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures.
- Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly.
- False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready”, founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions.
- False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand.
- Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast”, hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures.
- Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both.
- Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong.
Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise - from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles - Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them.
A must-listen for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a road map charting the path to startup success.
This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF of the book’s Appendix consisting of An Early-Stage Startup Survey.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 Tom Eisenmann (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Launching and scaling a startup is like a game of chess: It requires laser focus, relentless prioritization, and contingency strategies galore. I’ve always wished there was a guidebook to help entrepreneurs avoid common pitfalls on their way to wherever they’re headed. Eisenmann has truly helped illuminated a path to success by shining a spotlight on common startup failure patterns. His insights are invaluable, whether you’re just getting started, or you’re eyeing your endgame.” (Jenn Hyman, co-founder and CEO, Rent the Runway)
“It’s no secret that having a great idea isn’t enough to guarantee your success as an entrepreneur. I see it all the time on Shark Tank: Even the brightest, most driven founders with the most innovative ideas sometimes find themselves going down the wrong path and facing the decision of whether or not to close their business. Why Startups Fail is the perfect road map that each entrepreneurs needs to have in their back pocket to help them avoid those heartbreaking choices and continue to grow their business.” (Daymond John, star of ABC’s Shark Tank and New York Times best-selling author of The Power of Broke, Rise and Grind, and Powershift)
“Once you start reading this book, you won’t be able to put it down. Eisenmann has masterfully explained in a clear, thoughtful way why startups fail in a clear, thoughtful way. This is a must-read for any entrepreneur, investor, or startup team member. By avoiding the biggest reasons companies fail, we will see more entrepreneurial success, which is something society needs more than ever.” (Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and COO, Cloudflare)
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Story
More than 100,000 entrepreneurs rely on this book for detailed, step-by-step instructions on building successful, scalable, profitable startups. The National Science Foundation pays hundreds of startup teams each year to follow the process outlined in the book, and it's taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and more than 100 other leading universities worldwide. Why? The Startup Owner's Manual guides you, step-by-step, as you put the Customer Development process to work.
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Nothing to learn from this book
- By Thomas D. Kehoe on 02-23-22
By: Steve Blank, and others
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Founder vs Investor
- The Honest Truth About Venture Capital from Startup to IPO
- By: Elizabeth Joy Zalman, Jerry Neumann
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Joy Zalman, Jerry Neumann, Andrew Magnusson
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Every iconic tech company was once a startup. And while these companies like to paint an origin story full of surefooted confidence, the truth is usually something different: the early life of most startups is pure chaos. This chaos comes from the vastly different motivations and incentives between those with the vision and those with the money. From fundraising paranoia to boardroom coups, Zalman and Neumann train their inimitable voices on the gulf between what founders and investors promise to do and what they end up actually doing.
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Useful and enlightening
- By Chr. G on 11-02-24
By: Elizabeth Joy Zalman, and others
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Founders at Work
- Stories of Startups' Early Days
- By: Jessica Livingston
- Narrated by: Chelsea Kwoka, full cast
- Length: 21 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company.
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Wish I had listened to the book sooner.
- By Kindle Customer on 04-11-22
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Startup CEO
- A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business
- By: Matt Blumberg
- Narrated by: William Michael Redman
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A definitive audiobook for any CEO - first time or otherwise - of a high-growth company. While big company CEOs are usually groomed for the job for years, startup CEOs aren't - and they're often young and relatively inexperienced in business in general.
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Good, but Too long and a bit corporate-ish
- By Gil Tov Ly on 09-20-16
By: Matt Blumberg
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How to Raise a Venture Capital Fund
- The Essential Guide on Fundraising and Understanding Limited Partners
- By: Winter Mead
- Narrated by: Marc P. LeVasseur
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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This book serves as a guide. It dives into the process of raising a venture capital fund, the how-tos, the unique language of the limited partner (LP) world, secrets of how LPs think about fund diligence and alignment, the best practices in fundraising, what works, and how you can best prepare for success.
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raising a fund for beginners
- By Scott Goodman on 11-18-21
By: Winter Mead
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The Cold Start Problem
- How to Start and Scale Network Effects
- By: Andrew Chen
- Narrated by: Andrew Chen
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Although software has become easier to build, launching and scaling new products and services remains difficult. Start-ups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect”, where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them.
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Great high level summary. More unique insights wanted.
- By Roman on 12-09-21
By: Andrew Chen
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The Venture Mindset
- How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth
- By: Ilya Strebulaev, Alex Dang
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Ilya Strebulaev has spent the last two decades at Stanford studying VCs’ counterintuitive approaches to decision-making, and the reasons behind the success and failure of corporate innovation efforts. Alex Dang, a senior leader at McKinsey and Amazon, has seen up close the impact VCs’ thinking and mechanisms can have on a business’ success. Together in The Venture Mindset, they present nine distinct principles that can help anyone looking to transform their business and achieve extraordinary results, no matter the industry.
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Basic VC concepts
- By Jethro Pwez on 01-09-25
By: Ilya Strebulaev, and others
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The Lean Startup
- How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
- By: Eric Ries
- Narrated by: Eric Ries
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
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Informative, mature but not original or essential
- By Jason Comely on 02-19-13
By: Eric Ries
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The SaaS Playbook
- Build a Multimillion-Dollar Startup Without Venture Capital
- By: Rob Walling
- Narrated by: Rob Walling
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Learn how to compete against large competitors and structure your pricing for maximum growth. Discover the four SaaS Cheat Codes that can dramatically accelerate your business's success. Learn how to avoid common mistakes that SaaS founders make and identify the right marketing approaches for your business.
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Solid
- By Phil Williams on 12-14-23
By: Rob Walling
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Angel
- How to Invest in Technology Startups - Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000
- By: Jason Calacanis
- Narrated by: Jason Calacanis
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past 25 years, Jason Calacanis has made a fortune investing in creators, spotting and helping build and fund a number of successful technology start-ups - investments that have earned him tens of millions of dollars. Now, in this enlightening guide that is sure to become the bible for 21st century investors, Calacanis takes potential angels step by step through his proven method of creating massive wealth: start-ups.
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This audio book is worth millions!!
- By BRAD on 07-21-17
By: Jason Calacanis
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Secrets of Sand Hill Road
- Venture Capital and How to Get It
- By: Scott Kupor, Eric Ries
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VCs think. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Kupor explains exactly how VCs decide where and how much to invest, and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal and make the most of their relationships with VCs. Filled with Kupor's firsthand experiences, insider advice, and practical takeaways, Secrets of Sand Hill Road is the guide every entrepreneur needs to turn their startup into the next unicorn.
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As a founder I can highly recommend it
- By Mark on 07-15-19
By: Scott Kupor, and others
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Hackers & Painters
- Big Ideas from the Computer Age
- By: Paul Graham
- Narrated by: Mark Sando
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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We are living in the computer age, in a world increasingly designed and engineered by computer programmers and software designers, by people who call themselves hackers. Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care? Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970.
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a mindsett that sets people apart
- By Andrew at the BlackFox on 09-10-21
By: Paul Graham
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Delivering Happiness
- A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
- By: Tony Hsieh
- Narrated by: Tony Hsieh
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In this, his first audiobook, Tony Hsieh - the widely admired CEO of Zappos, the online shoe retailer -explains how he created a unique culture and commitment to service that aims to improve the lives of its employees, customers, vendors, and backers. Using anecdotes and stories from his own life experiences, and from other companies, Hsieh provides concrete ways that companies can achieve unprecedented success.
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Delivering Spin
- By Marc L. Mintz on 08-06-10
By: Tony Hsieh
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Lost and Founder
- A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
- By: Rand Fishkin
- Narrated by: Rand Fishkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Rand Fishkin, the founder and former CEO of Moz, reveals how traditional Silicon Valley "wisdom" leads far too many startups astray, with the transparency and humor that his hundreds of thousands of blog readers have come to love. Everyone knows how a startup story is supposed to go: A young, brilliant entrepreneur has a cool idea, drops out of college, defies the doubters, overcomes all odds, makes billions, and becomes the envy of the technology world. This is not that story. It's not that things went badly for Rand Fishkin; they just weren't quite so Zuckerberg-esque.
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Stopped reading - politics in a non-political book
- By T on 10-17-19
By: Rand Fishkin
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Start Small, Stay Small
- A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup
- By: Rob Walling
- Narrated by: Rob Walling
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Start Small, Stay Small is a step-by-step guide to launching a self-funded start-up. If you're a desktop, mobile, or web developer, this audiobook is your blueprint to getting your start-up off the ground with no outside investment.
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Can't get past the vocal fry
- By Mahesh on 07-31-21
By: Rob Walling
What listeners say about Why Startups Fail
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- Joey
- 07-11-23
Advanced advice for startup founders
Great book. Excellent advice for startup founders that are experienced. Also great for inexperienced founders to know what to look out for.
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- Alejandro
- 11-18-22
Good Book, someteimes feels a little bit repetiré.
Good book full of stories of why companies failed and their learnings.
sometimes it feels monotonous, but it states the authors points. It's an easy reading and good learning material for all people wanting to start a new venture.
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- Anonymous User
- 12-12-22
Great book for startup founders
This audio book includes stories of several failed startups. Majority are not tech startups. It goes into detail of the steps they took, pivots they made and why it failed. You can learn what to avoid from this book. You can also learn how to close your company in case it failed. It sometimes goes off topic at some chapters but still it's really worth it.
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- Cliente de Kindle
- 06-13-21
I Love it
I am founding an Startup and this book give me a lot of context to start with pros and cons of decision making , with real cases and some frameworks that are very practical in real life; it has more phases like Scaling and Failing, 100% recommended.
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1 person found this helpful
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- James Blackwell
- 01-01-23
Working at a start up? Frustrated? Read this.
What better way to figure out how not to screw up then to study stories of all the people who screwed up… Rather than only looking at success stories? This is an excellent audiobook with a ton of lessons 🤘🏽
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- James S.
- 06-03-21
Academic but not dull
Interesting case studies on startups that failed. Not a statistically-minded book, so avoiding survivorship bias was essentially impossible. Still, useful details from specific cases. The human element - what makes a good startup team - was represented well.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Torrey Payne
- 06-20-23
Valuable, real lessons
I appreciated this book because it spoke to real evidence, instead of staying in the theoretical realm. This is business, no one needs an armchair general. The case studies were valuable and well chosen. I’m guessing he went over many of these cases in his classes. Feels like a must-read if you are about to begin a startup.
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- Eric Curiel
- 08-22-23
Insightful
Even though the scope is mostly limited to business to consumer (B2C) tech companies, some interesting insights can be applied to garden-variety new businesses.
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- Gabe Erwin
- 02-01-23
Insightful Real Life Stories
This book does a great job educating you on important patterns to failed startups while also sharing real company’s journeys with detailed timelines.
I felt at times the information was repeated to a point that extended the book longer than it needed to be, but still carried insightful things to know.
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- Haman
- 09-17-21
Case studies with sound advice
Gives you a handful of examples on what went wrong with promising startups. Sound advice if you plan on learning from others mistakes.
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1 person found this helpful