3 Pitfalls In The Startup Jungle—And How To Recover From Them

This post is part of a series on starting up smarter. Get the whole series here!

For over seven years, I spent an ungodly amount of time working on—and worrying about—my startup. We went from three people with a kernel of an idea to a whole phylum of software and services. Hundreds of thousands of users. Hundreds of enterprise customers. Hundreds of employees.

It was a lot of hard lessons—fits and lurches—but it's crazy how far we've come. I used to interview smart founders and try to glean their wisdom. I ended up going down a rabbit hole and writing a book about how innovation happens. Now I often find myself on the other side of that favor, giving advice to other tech upstarts based on my research (and mistakes!). Time and again, I see them falling into the same three traps my cofounders and I learned to avoid back when we were in the startup jungle.

When I talk to entrepreneurs there's a diagram I end up drawing on the whiteboard over and over. This simple illustration explains the difference between a startup that's truly exciting versus a startup that will struggle to inspire employees, press, investors—even you, after a while.

Here's the diagram:

In my definition:

• A Feature is a useful thing. Features make sense within the context of some other thing. [The "Like" button on Facebook.]
• A Product is a thing that people are willing to pay or sign up for. Products usually have multiple Features. [Facebook, when you use it as a social network.]
• A Business is something that makes money from one or more Products. [Facebook's advertising features help it make money from its Products.]
• A Platform is something that other Businesses can build on top of. [All those apps out there that run on Facebook are what make Facebook a Platform.]

PITFALL NO. 1: The Orphaned Feature. I don't hear a lot of pitches for bona fide platforms. In fact, most pitches I hear aren't even for businesses. As it turns out, the ideas I most commonly vet from budding entrepreneurs only add up to features. And that's okay, so long as that isn't where the story ends.

Quick example: I've heard more than one pitch for the idea of "a Like button for things outside of Facebook." Not a terrible idea per se, but let me ask you something: does that really make sense outside the context of a platform? (e.g., Facebook) Or a blog that runs on a platform? (e.g., Blogger) All alone, an orphaned feature is going to have a pretty tough time in the startup jungle. An orphaned feature will struggle to get traction, make money, or even make people care.

This may force you to reassess the problem you're trying to solve. Are you really trying to address the dearth of "Like" buttons outside Facebook? Or are you trying to solve the problem of not knowing what, in the hurricane of Internet noise, is going to be worth your time? What is the fundamental problem that needs solving? The deeper you dig, the better.

PITFALL NO. 2: The Unsellable Product. A lot of entrepreneurs create interesting products, but they have a hard time turning them into businesses. Sometimes it's because the product just isn't that useful on its own. Sometimes it's because the product itself isn't something people will pay money for. In either case, your business will have to be built around that product in some other way. That, or you'll need to make your flagship product complimentary, simultaneously developing others you can sell once you've built up a fanbase.

Until then, it's back to GitHub, young Skywalker.

PITFALL NO. 3: Failure to Evolve. In my opinion, what most of these entrepreneurs really want to build is a business or a platform. So I tell them: the first question to ask yourself when you have an idea for a feature is, "How can this be expanded to become a standalone product? And how can I sell said standalone product, such that I've got an honest-to-goodness business on my hands?"

Not every business can become—or needs to become—a platform. Platforms are rare. They often emerge from businesses that have been around for a long time. (Remember when Jeff Bezos used to peddle books?) The convergence of other businesses evolved Amazon from a scrappy online retailer to a vast digital shopping mall, where a whole galaxy of companies must compete just to sell their own products. And now they even host other platforms, like Contently!

To quote Pearl Jam, it's evolution, baby. (I can't believe I just quoted Pearl Jam.)

SURVIVING THE GAME. Next time you're working on a startup idea I suggest you scribble down this diagram yourself. Ask yourself, "What circle am I in right now? How can I avoid getting stuck here? How can I make the jump to the next, bigger circle?"

Welcome to the jungle.

Shane Snow is founder of Contently and author of three books.

He explores science, humanity, and business (and occasionally underground tunnels!) from New York City. If you liked this post, please click "follow" above or subscribe to the monthly newsletter to be the first to get more like this!