

An analysis of 32 startup failure post-mortems - why startups fail - asanwal
http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/top-reasons-startups-fail-analyzing-startup-failure-post-mortem/

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sebg
The thing that stuck out was that all of the 32 startups and the 20 reasons
chubbybrain gave for their failure could be summed up in "lack of
information." Lack of information regarding markets, how to approach
investors, location, etc.

If you look at people / startups who have succeed you can always trace it to
an unquenchable desire to think/collect/process more information about their
problem area. Sometimes this means doing a phd at Stanford on information
aggregation (google) and sometimes it means living your startup for a year
(airbnb).

A/B Testing, mentors, books, blogs, YC, everything is about taking information
out of the ether, processing it so that you can use it for your startup, and
making progress.

After all, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made
in a very narrow field." ~Niels Bohr

By making the mistakes you collect information for the next time.

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asanwal
Thanks for reading the post (yes - it's long) and interesting point. But
information alone isn't enough, right?

There is the conflict of knowing vs. doing. So having info helps on the
knowing side but not getting investors, being in the wrong location are also
issues of not doing.

~~~
sebg
I would argue that doing is the execution of knowing. So I would posit that if
you are executing that 100% in the best direction you know, then if you are in
the wrong location it's a matter of not having the information on why you
should be in another location.

