Start-ups can be tricky. It all comes down to whether or not you can find or form a viable market segment that can support the growth of your new technology or product to reach profitability (and then onwards and upwards from there of course!) And remember, this is only *after* you have spent many millions of investors' dollars just to get that first product version out the door. Look across Silicon Valley,though, and the overall odds aren't great for any sort of real success. Roughly a third of new start-up companies will fail outright, another third will reach some sort of neutral (+ or - a few percentage points) outcome and the the final third will generate some level of return for investors and hopefully the company employees. In this day & age there are very few "knock it out of the ball park" outcomes that can help offset the failures and generate big returns for VC funds. That tends to rack-up the heat on portfolio companies to produce, and preferably produce now.
No wonder it's hard to map out any kind of well delineated future path capable of supporting a solid operating plan that a start-up can work to. I know many start-up CEOs and, to some degree or another, we all face exactly the same problems: timing and suitability. Can we find/build/bully a market into existence before the VCs tire of the investment required and the funds dry out, and can the business support a long term, growing revenue stream big enough to open up the opportunity for a decent exit? (Of course, we're not talking about the YouTubes of this world but rather the wide range of other start-ups creating new tools, business models, etc. that comprise much of the "real-world" environment we see in SV. Nothing against these "eyeballs only" operations, but that's not where most of us earn a crust.)
No wonder it's hard to map out any kind of well delineated future path capable of supporting a solid operating plan that a start-up can work to. I know many start-up CEOs and, to some degree or another, we all face exactly the same problems: timing and suitability. Can we find/build/bully a market into existence before the VCs tire of the investment required and the funds dry out, and can the business support a long term, growing revenue stream big enough to open up the opportunity for a decent exit? (Of course, we're not talking about the YouTubes of this world but rather the wide range of other start-ups creating new tools, business models, etc. that comprise much of the "real-world" environment we see in SV. Nothing against these "eyeballs only" operations, but that's not where most of us earn a crust.)
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