Why do 80% of businesses fail and is failing purely by bad luck, or can it be avoided?

Startup is hard dude. Whatever the stats. Arguing about the small stuff is pointless.

Couple of reasons startups fail are:

Founder blow-ups
Wrong founding team -> bozo explosion
Too small market
Wrong timing
Messed up CAC vs LTV (How much you make vs acquisition cost)
Lack of focus
Doing the wrong thing
Running out of runway

Here is what Forbes think

Here is what CBInsights think

There are a lot of things you can do to preempt failure.

If you aren’t a nerd, you don’t know what to do.

I was out on a date last week with a model who is setting up a startup in sextech sector (it turned out). I gave her some advice about how to start and she said “Well, I’ve spent a lot of money already. The tech is hard. So that would have been helpful before I started spending money.”

I still told her to get to market and fail faster.

Failing fast is so key.

Your idea is crap till it makes money.

Remove your ego from your idea. View it as a test you are not committed to until the idea becomes something to commit to.

Realistically, you only get a AAA exit if you are a AAA person.

Most people aren’t.

You can still make money as a neanderthal, if you hammer away at the right thing, at the right time, in the right place.

The idiots you see are survivorship bias.

Eventually, a million monkeys will write the complete works of Shakespeare.

You can totally avoid failure.

You need to know a lot to know why things won’t work. I teach founders this all the time.

The thing is, sometimes crazy shit works and you don’t know why. That’s why I always keep an open mind….