Startups & Innovation Projects: Wrong Turns That Burn Millions
An outsourced CMO / interim marketing director perspective
Having worked with over 30 startups across multiple verticals over the years, I’ve been progressively more curious about where these businesses go wrong in their infancy, and why they fail to reach maturity. What are these hurdles and why can they be fatal?
Things can (and often do) go awry anywhere along the multiple plate spinning of legal, investor relations, HR, financial management and other key areas. However I’m going to focus mostly on the growth side of this equation; as I’m more qualified to focus on where I spend most of my time learning, experimenting and supporting these businesses; cost-effectively acquiring new customers.
For reference; whether I’m working as a part-time CMO or interim head of growth, I most commonly encounter two main types of businesses:
- Heavy seed-level funded independent startups
- Innovation projects/incubators inside more mature businesses
Although potentially different in structure, team and culture, from experience they can be markedly similar in where they commonly go wrong.
In this article, I will present the common problems, ideas about solutions, and a process mapping technique I develop and use – with some tangible learnings to share.
Proactive CFO driving growth, profit improvement, cash flow, valuation, transformation and turnaround I SaaS I Life Sciences I Tech
7yReally an excellent article. As a CFO it's a great read. After all finance and marketing are batting for the same team !
Advancing human centred AI at Rejuve.AI under SingularityNET, ASI Alliance member. 🧘🌐💡
7yExcellent piece thanks Oren. As Airbnb owners, me and my partner took part in a user testing session for a home maintenance startup app, eating pizza and providing user feedback. I also recall is one of the senior managers stopping by and wishing us well - and thinking if he only knew I had recently pitched a prototype home maintenance app to Kier (working for Causeway Technologies in an internal growth hacking role :) In other words, from my experience, perhaps finding early adopters is another way to make sure the solution-comes-before-the-product, in a hands-on way that everyone from tech to marketing can appreciate?