What’s on the Why Startups Fail poster
A 7-row table: Cause · Looks like.
Drawn from post-mortem analyses of failed startups.
- No market need — Built something nobody wanted
- Ran out of cash — Scaled before fit; misjudged runway
- Wrong team — Missing skills, or co-founder conflict
- Out-competed — A better-funded or faster rival
- Pricing / cost problems — Unit economics never worked
- Poor product — Shipped, but not good enough
- Ignored customers — Built on opinion, not evidence
'No market need' consistently tops these lists. It is a discovery failure, and it is preventable before writing any code.
Questions about the Why Startups Fail poster
- What’s on the Why Startups Fail poster?
- A 7-row table: Cause · Looks like. Drawn from post-mortem analyses of failed startups. No market need — Built something nobody wanted; Ran out of cash — Scaled before fit; misjudged runway; Wrong team — Missing skills, or co-founder conflict; Out-competed — A better-funded or faster rival; Pricing / cost problems — Unit economics never worked; Poor product — Shipped, but not good enough; Ignored customers — Built on opinion, not evidence. 'No market need' consistently tops these lists. It is a discovery failure, and it is preventable before writing any code.
- Who is the Why Startups Fail poster for?
- Why Startups Fail belongs to the Business & Management section rather than to a school year, because business is not something one grade owns. Anyone learning entrepreneurship can pin it up — a beginner, a student mid-course, or someone revising years later.
- When should you use the Why Startups Fail poster?
- Running out of cash is the mechanism. The cause is almost always upstream of it. A wall chart earns its place by being glanceable from where the work is happening, so Why Startups Fail belongs on the wall where that business work actually happens, within glancing distance, rather than filed away.
- What other posters go with Why Startups Fail?
- The Business Plan, Cap Tables & Dilution and Legal Structures sit alongside Why Startups Fail in the Business & Management section. Printed together they make a wall rather than a single sheet, which is how a reference set actually gets used.The Business PlanCap Tables & DilutionLegal Structures
- Is the Why Startups Fail poster free to download and print?
- Yes. Why Startups Fail downloads as a free PDF with no account, no email and no watermark, like everything else in the Business & Management section. Print as many copies as you like for a home, a classroom, a library or a tutoring group; reselling the file is the only thing the licence rules out.Read the licence
- What size does the Why Startups Fail poster print at?
- Why Startups Fail is a vector PDF laid out for US Letter, and prints on A4 with Fit to page — the same file, no separate download. Because every mark on it is drawn rather than photographed, it stays sharp enlarged to A3, A2 or A1 at a copy shop. Colour carries emphasis only, so a greyscale print of Why Startups Fail loses nothing.Printing guide
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