{"id":42175,"date":"2023-10-20T15:19:18","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/running-out-of-heart-not-money-the-cause-of-startup-failure-christina-wodtke-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:19:18","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:19:18","slug":"running-out-of-heart-not-money-the-cause-of-startup-failure-christina-wodtke-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/running-out-of-heart-not-money-the-cause-of-startup-failure-christina-wodtke-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Running out of heart, not money, the cause of startup failure: Christina Wodtke – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Silicon Valley startup consultant Christina Wodtke says she\u2019s seen more startups fail because they\u2019ve forgotten what\u2019s important rather than have just run out of money.<\/p>\n

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Speaking at the Lean15 conference in Wellington, New Zealand, Wodtke says it\u2019s about continually remembering why you started the company in the first place.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne of the things that (breaks my heart) about working with startups in Silicon Valley is so many of them die when they don\u2019t have to,\u201d Wodtke says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey die because they forget what\u2019s important, they die because they get distracted by shiny objects, they die because they forgot why they did it in the first place.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe all hear about startups that run out of money, but I would say I\u2019ve seen more startups die because they\u2019ve run out of heart. You\u2019ve got to find a way to keep pushing the things that matter to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Wodtke has taken on a series of executive roles in the tech industry around Silicon Valley, including being involved in the lead team developing the events platform and newsfeed for LinkedIn, redesigning Myspace and launching gaming platform Zynga.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

During the keynote address, Wodtke offered a number of important pieces of advice for startup founders and entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

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Pretend you<\/b>\u2019re starting from new<\/b><\/h2>\n

Startup founders need to be continually \u2018starting from new\u2019 and put aside their original ideas, Wodtke says.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s about pre-empting where someone with a fresh outlook and ideas would take the business.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat if you were fired and the broad brought in two new people? What would those people do?\u201d Wodtke asks.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAnd then do it now before the board forces you to. Let\u2019s disrupt ourselves.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLet\u2019s pretend we\u2019re brand new. Let\u2019s pretend we don\u2019t have all this history.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Focus on only one objective<\/b><\/h2>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

Startups need to be striving towards one key objective rather than a mountain of distracting goals, Wodtke says.<\/p>\n

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Utilising the management by objectives approach can be greatly beneficial for startups, she says, but it\u2019s important that founders don\u2019t become overly ambitious with the number of objectives to achieve in a quarter.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s something to focus all the efforts of the whole team. It\u2019s a mission for the quarter,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPick one that really matters and watch it like a hawk. You need to have radical focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Revisit that objective every Monday<\/b><\/h2>\n

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\u201cThis happens to me all the time when I\u2019m consulting – people will make the promises and the objective but then they won\u2019t look at them for weeks,\u201d Wodtke says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEvery Monday you should make a promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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She says it\u2019s crucial that the objectives are discussed within the team first thing on Monday, include attainable goals for the upcoming week and the percentage at which the objective is at.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAsk yourselves: \u2018are we getting closer to our goal or further from our goal? What are the three top priorities that we\u2019re going to do this week that movies our objectives or fixes a health metric that\u2019s in trouble?\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cLook at the pipeline too – what\u2019s coming down the line.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou can do this in five minutes on a Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Fridays are for wines and wins<\/b><\/h2>\n

<\/b><\/p>\n

While the start of the week should focus on metrics and goals, the end of the week should be a bit more fun.<\/p>\n

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Wodtke says it\u2019s crucial for a startup, no matter what size, to come together on a Friday and celebrate what was achieved by every member of the team.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s a communal celebration where every Friday you can show what\u2019s been happening,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe let the engineers demo, but why would you stop with engineers? What about designers? What about the sales and business team?<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s something magical about getting together in a circle with people, breaking bread and sharing all the amazing things you\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEveryone needs bragging time. It motivates teams to have something to share, and makes you feel like you\u2019re part of something special.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

StartupSmart attended Lean15 as a guest of Positively Wellington Tourism.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n

Want to grow your business with Instagram?<\/i> <\/i>StartupSmart School can help.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Silicon Valley startup consultant Christina Wodtke says she\u2019s seen more startups fail because they\u2019ve forgotten what\u2019s important rather than have<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60485,"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\/42175"}],"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=42175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}