14 comments

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  Olli

  11 months ago

  Thank you for pointing to these two articles.
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  Heidi

  11 months ago

  After reading this review I had to post my comments. I totally agree with this and would love to participate in any events or meetings that help entrepreneurs swap ideas and help each other avoid major mistakes. I am an entrepreneur with an early stage company and I have been successfully bootstrapping the company todate. I believe in some cases venture capital is needed at some point in the company's history but from the get go I think its premature unless it can be justified. Remember the old school way was to build your company from scratch with nothing more than loans and grants. Many successfully accomplished this.
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  Mehdi Akiki

  11 months ago

  I hope to see this happen in the next events here in Montreal. The next tech entrepreneur breakfast should be a good place to start this debate. I am ready to share my own failures as well. As well as how I want to do to improve my own outcome.
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  Karl Goldfield

  11 months ago

  Some great insight. We should as communities bond together and share the good, and the not so good. It is usually from understanding of the not so good that the best emerges.
  
  Edison and the light bulb, many know this story is the best way of looking at it.
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  Don Maes

  11 months ago

  We have not only learned so much from others who have given of their time and experience in online communities, it is equally important to remember to try and give back as well. Giving spreads giving, that how small business survive!
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  bhicks

  11 months ago

  So what happens to the money they raised and do the investors loose?
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  Ben Yoskovitz

  11 months ago

  @bhicks: Investors typically lose. Of course it depends on the deal structure; there may be some residual value that investors get through the IP, asset ownership, etc. but that's still a failure.
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  Rick

  11 months ago

  Ben, it's true that probably 90% of the companies investors invest in fail, but the 10% that succeed, investors reap incredible benefits. That's the whole foundation behind venture capital; when a company succeeds, venture capitalists can make hundreds of times their investment back, which covers their failed ventures and more.
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  Harvey

  10 months ago

  Thanks for pointing out these two articles, the were very helpful.
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  Sid Savara

  10 months ago

  Thanks for pointing these out. I especially love reading post mortems - it's easy to say what you did right when you're a success, but I think we all learn more from reading about critical mistakes made by others.
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  Mister Gibson

  10 months ago

  I'm afraid that i wouldn't have the nerve to invest a heap load of money on something that is so uncertain, i wouldn't be able to sleep at night, some people in life thrive on the risk taking, not for me i'm afraid, regards, mick..
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  acarrothers

  10 months ago

  Thank you for the link to the Roger Ehrenberg article. I enjoyed reading about his mistakes and will hopefully learn not to repat them in my own ventures.
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  Oyun indir

  8 months ago

  I especially love reading post mortems - it's easy to say what you did right when you're a success
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  Martin Zwilling

  5 months ago

  There have been many articles written on startup failures, so rather than focus on reasons for failure, I decided to extract some basic principles which are critical to the succes of a startup. See my article "Startup Principles for Success" on http://blog.startupprofessionals.com for some key ones.
  
  Martin Zwilling, CEO & Founder, Startup Professionals, Inc.
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