😅 3 Founder F*ck Ups to Avoid
Happy Friday,
Jam-packed week for anyone with wifi. 50 cent memes had us trippin', Coinbase QR codes got more attention than the Rams and $3.6B was hacked in bitcoin funds. How are those Valentine flowers holding up in your kitchen? Whether you had a hot date night or not, we've assembled a newsletter that's straight fire. Today's line-up is stronger than Norway's Olympic ski team. 🇳🇴
- 3 founder F-ups to avoid
- Startups ideas to bet your chips on
- News zingers that need a double click
Swipe right and let's dive in:
😬 3 Things Founders Shouldn't Do
If you've been a founder for more than 24 hours, you know it's a long road of wins and losses. Since your phones are flooded with the wins (cough cough TechCrunch and LinkedIn), your boi J Hanny is gonna hit you with some losses.
Here's the top 3 reasons startups fail according to our friends at CBinsights:
💸 Ran Out of Cash (38%):
Keeping track of the cash-ola can be tough. When you raise a round, the clock starts ticking. Daqri was an augmented reality startup that had to close its doors after tearing through $250M of funding. Not an email update you wanna send.
💡 Lesson: hire a strong CFO or financial partner to manage the books. It's worth it in the long run.
🤷♀️ No Market Need (35%):
Building a startup is like surfing. You need a wave to get moving. The 2nd biggest reasons startup fail is b/c they tackle a problem that doesn't exist (aka a bad wave).
Streaming service, Quibi, is a timely example of this. They had to call 'er quits 6 months after launching because customer demand wasn't strong enough. The worst part? They'd raised $1.8 billion from hopeful VCs. Tough text to send.
💡 Lesson: validate the demand for your startup. We heard there's a tool out there where you can actually get feedback on your idea before you launch...
💪 Got Out-Worked (20%):
When a market's hot, competitors follow. In the startup idea phase, competition is healthy to validate a need. As soon as you've raised funding or built a team, watch for rivals that enter your space.
Reach Robotics had to power down after drowning in a hyper-competitive space. The co-founder, Silas Adekunle, admitted the consumer robotics sector "is an inherently challenging space". 6 years after pushing they had to hang up the hat.
💡 Lesson: be loud when you need feedback and stay quiet when things are going well. Keep a detailed tab of your top competitors.
To sum it up, startups are tough. There's no doubt about it. But here's the kicker:
the journey creates incredible people and develops world-class products so we keep going.
Our goal at Kernal is to give you an unfair advantage. We want to help you validate your unicorn idea before you go to market. 💸
Thanks to our friends at CBInsights for inspiring this breakdown. Check out this article for the full list of reasons startups go south.
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Sitting on a startup idea? Post it here and tweet us so we can share it in next week's newsletter.
🥁 Startup Zingers
- Email Wizardry: Jakob Greenfeld, launched a new email tool called EnrichMyList.com to help you find your highest signal subscribers.
- Web 3 Touchdown: ex-NFL player launches Player’s Company DAO, a new DAO to help pro athletes invest their money (Milk Road)
- Show Me the Money: according to Signalfire, less than 4% of the creator economy (50M creators) earns a living from their creative work. (IH)
- Steal this Playbook: read David's thread on how writing in public should be your secret superpower.
- 30 Investor Emails: no joke. Our boy Julian shared 30 emails to angel investors that wanna see pitch decks.
Like these zingers? Join the Kernal discord to read more startup gems.
🐦 Tweet of the Week:
If you had $15 to build a hedge fund, who'd you pick?
Wanna jam on startup ideas? Come Dougie in our Discord. All the cool kids are doing it:
Have a rockin' weekend.
💚 Kernal fam
P.S. Investors are excited about Kernal. It's kinda cool. So we're putting together a list of MVPs to show how people are using the platform. If you have a MVP you're working on send it our way. Drop a line to partners@loi.studio. 🙏
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