Everywhere you look these days, people are attempting to start innovative businesses and nonprofits, working on putting team, product and financing together, and generally trying to change the world - or, at least, their world - through entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, I strongly suspect that the mortality rate of tech startups is as high as ever (no rigorous scientific tracking there, just common sense and observation - please do share stats if you know of some). In any case, one failed startup is one too many.
Guest author Greg Boutin helps startups and early-stage ventures defy a certain death, through strategy and marketing services. He blogs on entrepreneurship and on semantic technologies. He thanks Arnold Wytenburg, William Mougayar of Eqentia, Fabien Tiburce of Compliantia, and Ceara Scullion for their priceless input on this post.
So, wouldn't it be great if we could align on a guiding set of principles on how not to kill a startup? Think Hippocratic Oath for entrepreneurs - just not strictly an oath, and more in the spirit of "Doing Good" than "Doing No Harm" (or "Doing No Evil" for that matter). After all, unlike humans, doing nothing to a startup is a sure path to death, so we need to be more proactive.
And yes, I know, blanket business principles can sometimes be silly (if you haven't yet, I recommend you read the Halo Effect by Rosenzweig), but as the recent book The Checklist Manifesto argues, situations can also sometimes be improved with the introduction of simple, field-tested guidelines. I can personally tie every startup failure that I know of to the principles below not being respected.
To read the full, original article click on this link: 10 Principles For Not Killing Your Startup - ReadWriteStart
Author: Greg Boutin
