The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups

People's motives for starting startups are usually mixed. They're usually doing it from some combination of the desire to make money, the desire to seem cool, genuine interest in the problem, and unwillingness to work for someone else. The last two are more powerful motivators than the first two. It's ok for founders to want to make money or to see... See more

It takes enormous discipline to NOT try to scale something that's working. But some things just don't scale -- and trying to do so can destroy the golden goose in the process. Many entrepreneurially minded people can't help themselves from trying.

The founders who are doing it for the money will take the first sufficiently large acquisition offer, and the ones who are doing it to seem cool will rapidly discover that there are much less painful ways of seeming cool.

So the other lesson is that you have to be willing to move on, even if you've got a real success. That was, in fact, the same problem that Xerox had. Because the 914, the original copier, was so successful, they couldn't look at a business that didn't have a "b" in the dollar amount. Unfortunately, new businesses start out small and grow.

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