Tag

startup economics

Why Companies Fail

I’ve touched on aspects of this topic before, but thought it was worthy of a full post. Companies in the venture business fail all the time. As I wrote last year, the majority of venture rounds fail to return capital. With all the hype one reads in the startup press these days, that fact can be easily lost. So we know that startups fail all the time, but why do they fail? Here are some common pitfalls based on our experiences (and here I’m referring not just to Foundry portfolio companies, although all of these lessons apply there as well, but also our observations of the broader markets). Premature scaling. The number one reason companies fail in my experience is…