
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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- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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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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The Founder's Dilemmas
- By: Noam Wasserman
- Narrated by: Mark Mosely
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin.
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Too much talk on the data
- By Stanley Tan on 10-02-14
By: Noam Wasserman
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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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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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Pattern Breakers
- Why Some Start-Ups Change the Future
- By: Mike Maples Jr, Peter Ziebelman
- Narrated by: Mike Maples Jr, Peter Ziebelman
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The breakthrough concepts of Pattern Breakers come from the observations of Mike Maples Jr., a seasoned venture capitalist, who noticed something strange. Start-ups like Twitter, Twitch, and Lyft had achieved extraordinary success despite their disregard for “best practices.” In contrast, other startups deemed highly promising often failed, even when they seemed to do everything right. Seeking answers, Maples and coauthor Peter Ziebelman set out to discover the hidden forces that drive extraordinary start-up success.
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I’ve read 100s of books, this is top 5 all time
- By Calisurf on 12-21-24
By: Mike Maples Jr, 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 Power Law
- Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
- By: Sebastian Mallaby
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world.
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An Excellent Modern History Book
- By BikerDave on 05-06-24
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All In
- How Obsessive Leaders Achieve the Extraordinary
- By: Robert Bruce Shaw
- Narrated by: Mark Smeby
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Groundbreaking leaders share a passionate commitment to achieving their vision that borders and sometimes crosses the line into obsession. All In shows how obsession, if properly focused and managed, is both necessary and productive. Advances in any endeavor almost always depend on a small group of individuals who are completely consumed by the goal they’re pursuing. When these leaders and their teams are successful, everyone benefits from their singular focus and relentless drive.
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This was a good lesson.
- By ken's Kindle on 08-08-20
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The Start-Up J Curve
- The Six Steps to Entrepreneurial Success
- By: Howard Love
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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After founding or co-founding over 15 start-ups and investing in another 50 early stage ventures as an angel investor, author Howard Love came to understand that a start-up unfolds in a predictable pattern. The more aware entrepreneurs are of this pattern, the better able they will be to capitalize on it.
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Release your product quickly, then be ready to morph.
- By California Dreaming on 04-02-17
By: Howard Love
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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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Zero to One
- Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
- By: Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
- Narrated by: Blake Masters
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
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Seems Insightful Until You Think A Little Deeper
- By Mark Brandon on 10-31-14
By: Peter Thiel, and others
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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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Build
- An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
- By: Tony Fadell
- Narrated by: Tony Fadell, Roger Wayne
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and learned enough in 30+ years in Silicon Valley about leadership, design, startups, Apple, Google, decision-making, mentorship, devastating failure and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopedia.
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Best guide for start up founders, ever!!!
- By Curly Beard on 05-28-22
By: Tony Fadell
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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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No Rules Rules
- Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
- By: Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
- Narrated by: Jason Culp, Allyson Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, best-selling author of The Culture Map and one of the world's most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial philosophies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from his own career, No Rules Rules is the full, fascinating, and untold story of a unique company making its mark on the world.
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Infomercial for Netflix
- By Srikanth Raju on 11-01-20
By: Reed Hastings, and others
Advanced advice for startup founders
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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.
Good Book, someteimes feels a little bit repetiré.
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Great book for startup founders
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I Love it
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Working at a start up? Frustrated? Read this.
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Academic but not dull
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Valuable, real lessons
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Insightful
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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.
Insightful Real Life Stories
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Case studies with sound advice
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