News article version of startup failure article
Mashauri (Mashauri.org) is an organization with a mission to significantly increase the success rate of startups across the globe.
They have written a number of articles about startup failure rates – and why Silicon Valley and others are not right in the accepted view that the majority of startups must fail and that failure is “good” because it is simply a learning experience.
Although they recognize that there will be failures and that it should be a learning experience, they believe that we can learn how to be better at launching and growing businesses – and in fact that we can learn from other founders’ success and failures and do a better job at developing viable businesses. They also claim that failure is far less of an option for many entrepreneurs than is the case in perhaps Palo Alto where funding is more plentiful and entrepreneurship is a choice, not the only option.
Mashauri have recently conducted an investigation into UK Government statistics where they have combined a number of databases to paint a picture of what is the actual failure rate of new businesses and when are they likely to fail. There are good reasons for using these particular datasets and they believe that the learnings are translatable to other countries, although the results might need to be adjusted for local factors.
Their overall findings are:
- About two thirds of all businesses fail within the first five years
- Almost one third of new businesses never gain traction (ie receive income from customers or receive funding)
- We are not getting better at helping new businesses become successful– in fact we are getting worse
These are shown with the relevant charts in the infographic below.
The full article can be found at: Startup failure rate is too high.
Or click the link at: http://wp.me/p7JRbh-IW
The next article in the series is going to look at the “why” of failure and try to map this onto the “when”.
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The author, Simon Gifford, is CEO at Mashauri, Director of Genesis management Consulting and an adjunct professor at IE Business School in Madrid.