This assignment is a brief reflection on the guest speaker lecture delivered by Josh Abott on March 3rd, 2022. Please feel free to refer to the zoom recording under week 8. This is an individual assignment. Please provide your response here and answer the following questions.
1. In your opinion, what are the top three reasons for startup failures out of the ones shared by Josh? Why?
A startup can fail due to many reasons. The top three reasons of failure as shared by Josh are -
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No market need for the products or services provided by the startup
Startup could start working and developing a product without thinking about the end users of such a product. When such product finally hits the market, it finds no customers, despite their spend on marketing. This could probably mean that there was no need for such a product.
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Startup running out of cash
Startup needs capital or money to build an MVP. Money can be required to procure parts, agreements, license, to pay salaries, etc. No cash means startup cannot continue to develop what they intend to.
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Startup not having the right team running the business
Not having the right team means the startup team doesn't have necessary skillset to develop the product or service. Without the right team, successful product is impossible to develop.
Yes, all the above reasons of failures can be addressed during the first phase of product development, which is 'Phase 0: Research and Development'.
This phase is about defining the product value that the startup product or services are going to achieve, and defining the MVP.
To put more elaborately, the startup researches about their product, the market, their customers, and the feasibility of their product.
As Josh explains, this phase has four different buckets. The first and second bucket is about Opportunity which focusses on "Market" and "Value creation" respectively. These buckets addresses the first reason of failure.
In these buckets, the startup defines the product value that is going to be achieved, what minimum viable product is, and what are the features that customers will value. This also means that the startup tries to find out the features that customers do not value, and what pain points the startup really need to solve. The startup should research about the market, whether it is growing or shrinking, does the market understand that they have a problem, are they willing to pay for solution to that problem, or is the problem not significant enough to be addressed. When such a research about the market and value creation is done, startup would understand whether there is really any need for their products and services or not.
The third and fourth is about Feasibility, which focuses on "Core Technology" and "Core Technology Definition", which addresses the second and third reason of failure. These bucket focusses the research on execution of the core technology of the products or services that the startup intends to offer. Research is done on Team and Supply chain, among other items.
During team research, the startup tries to find out whether they have the right group of people that would be able to execute on the product vision, or does the team needs to be augmented or different advisors or mentors needs to be provided.
During supply chain research, the startup tries to find out if they will be able to procure the parts for their product or service. They also evaluate if they will be able to build their MVP in a time efficient manner or cost effective manner.