{"id":41992,"date":"2023-10-20T15:17:57","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/web-start-up-success-dependent-on-mentors-report-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:17:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:17:57","slug":"web-start-up-success-dependent-on-mentors-report-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/web-start-up-success-dependent-on-mentors-report-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Web start-up success dependent on mentors: Report – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet start-ups who co-found their business and learn from mentors are more likely to be successful, according to a new report by US seed accelerator Blackbox.<\/p>\n

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The brainchild of serial entrepreneur Max Marmer, Blackbox recently launched the Startup Genome Project, an in-depth analysis of makes internet start-ups successful based on data from more than 650 early stage start-ups.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe goal of the Startup Genome Project is to increase the success rate of start-ups and accelerate the pace of innovation around the world by turning entrepreneurship into a science,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMost founders don\u2019t know what they should be focusing on and consequently dilute their focus or run in the wrong direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe goal of the report is to lay the foundation for a new framework for assessing start-ups more effectively by measuring the thresholds and milestones of development that internet start-ups move through.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe found that internet start-ups move through similar thresholds and milestones of development, which we segmented into stages. Start-ups that skipped these stages performed worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur foundation structure of start-up assessment is the start-up lifecycle\u2026 The start-up lifestyle is made of six stages of development.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    \n
  1. Discovery (five to seven months). Start-ups are focused on validating whether they are solving a meaningful problem and whether anybody would hypothetically be interested in their solution.<\/li>\n
  2. Validation (three to five months). Start-ups are looking to get early validation that people are interested in their product through the exchange of money or attention.<\/li>\n
  3. Efficiency (five to six months). Start-ups re\ufb01ne their business model and improve the efficiency of their customer acquisition process. Start-ups should be able to efficiently acquire customers in order to avoid scaling \u201cwith a leaky bucket\u201d.<\/li>\n
  4. Scale (seven to nine months). Start-ups step on the gas pedal and try to drive growth very aggressively.<\/li>\n
  5. Pro\ufb01t maximisation (not assessed in the report).<\/li>\n
  6. Renewal or decline (not assessed in the report).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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    According to the report, start-ups that have helpful mentors, and learn from start-up thought leaders, raise seven times more money and have 3.5 times better user growth.<\/p>\n

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    \u201cCompanies that follow start-up thought leaders are 80% more likely to raise money. Almost all companies that raised money had helpful mentors. Companies without helpful mentors almost always failed to raise funding,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n

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    The report reveals that investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company\u2019s operational performance, \u201cbut the right mentors significantly influence a company\u2019s performance and ability to make money.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    The report also reveals that solo founders take 3.6 times as long to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of two.<\/p>\n

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    \u201cBusiness-heavy founding teams are 6.2 times more likely to successfully scale with sales-driven start-ups than with product-centric start-ups,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n

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    \u201cTechnical-heavy founding teams are 3.3 times more likely to successfully scale with product- centric start-ups with no network effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    Meanwhile, balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9 times more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams.<\/p>\n

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    According to the report, founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%.<\/p>\n

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    The report states that start-ups need two to three times longer to validate their market than most founders expect, and this underestimation creates pressure to scale prematurely.<\/p>\n

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    \u201cPremature scaling is the most common reason for start-ups to perform worse. They tend to lose the battle early on by getting ahead of themselves,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Internet start-ups who co-found their business and learn from mentors are more likely to be successful, according to a new<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}