The Big Business Startup Industry
Roland Koch
Founder at leanrun ag | Xero & bexio Expert | Supporting SME's in Accounting, Payroll, Taxes | Supporting Founders at doobox.ch
If you want to start your own business, a tremendous number of coaches, platforms and business books are waiting for you. You learn the essential startup concepts like Validated Learning and Business Model Canvas. You burn your business plan and start investing your time wisely by going out of the building and test your assumptions with Minimum Viable Products. And still: Depending on the country and the statistics around 70% to 80% of all startups fail in the long run.
No big deal, right? Startup platforms, banks, insurance companies and accounting firms are pitching young entrepreneurs as if there were no tomorrow. Of course, if only 2 out of 10 startups survive, a huge number of entrepreneurs needs to enter the funnel so that enough succeed at the bottom line. And as the risk lies solely on the shoulders of the entrepreneur who will invest his or her capital anyway into the services of the startup industry, everyone seems to be ok with these numbers. Except for the entrepreneurs of course.
Startup Wonderland
The startup industry makes us believe the world of young entrepreneurs is glamorous and exciting and motivates us to start our own business. You find headlines like „Be your own boss“, presented by a happy good-looking young fellow smiling relaxed in the camera.
However, everyone who has experienced the tough and often frightening founding years knows that we are presented here with a fake reality. Being a young entrepreneur means first and foremost leaving your comfort zone. Invest a lot to build your own thing, with little chance of success.
Startup Reality
We founders do not need cheers of encouragement, especially not from people with a safe, corporate salary, who have never founded a company from scratch. We also do not need any (seemingly) free start-up offers. Rather, what we need is honest feedback about our intentions and the reality that's facing us. By coaches who can report from their own, first hand experience.
I believe we need more straight talk in the startup world. Not to demotivate but to help more courageous entrepreneurs succeed.
This blog posts was released on February 17, 2018 in the doobox blog www.doobox.ch/blog