risk management

Manage 10 of the 20 top startup failure risks.

Founder Friendly Standard and customer-funding can help founders avoid “No market need, Running out of cash, Not the right team,” and 7 more reasons startups fail. 

Source: Top 20 reasons startups fail is from CB Insights. I added the check marks.

The above graph shows the top 20 reasons why startups fail from CB Insights. I marked up the graph with green checkboxes to show which risk factors customer-funding (also called bootstrapping) can help you manage. Orange checkboxes denote risk factors that Founder Friendly Standard can help manage. 

Risk Factor: No market need

If you’re bootstrapping, you’ll find out pretty quickly if there is no market need. Unlike your angel and VC-funded cohorts, you’ll be able to make fast pivots while they’re lining up their organizations’ change management strategies.

Risk Factor: Ran out of cash

If you are bootstrapping, you are financing innovation with organic cash flows. This is a key growth driver in the Credit Suisse Family 1000 research. If your company is controlled by its founders, you’re more likely to pace yourself, spending the money like it’s your own vs. your VC-funded competitors who are quick to spend (principal–agent theory).

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Duplicate Data: Performing quantitative risk analysis for lead generation

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Duplicates in your Salesforce.com CRM cause mirky lead attribution, poor results.

As I blogged on on February 28, I met a gentleman whose lead generation agency is tasked with generating leads for a healthcare services company.

I asked him, “Does your client have a master data management strategy?” The answer was no.

The client is a large organization. They have millions of records of legacy data in Siebel and they are migrating to Salesforce CRM and Pardot. This legacy data could be a great asset if the client had a master data management system in place. The client does not, and this poses a risk for the lead generation agency.

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