What does it take to be a successful startup??

Some VCs (in silicone valley) said that they receive thousands of business plan daily. Some say that only 1 in 10 startups make it.

What makes a startup tick really intrigue me. I think it's the combination of team (not just founder!), product execution, market potential, timing and luck.

But this Startup Genome Report has compiled a study of 650+ web startups and analyzed the common characteristics of startups and trends among the startups that may imply to the general. I must say that I'm already agreeing to most of the key findings here:

1. Founders that learn are more successful: Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth.

2. Startups that pivot once or twice times raise 2.5x more money, have 3.6x better user growth, and are 52% less likely to scale prematurely than startups that pivot more than 2 times or not at all.

3. Many investors invest 2-3x more capital than necessary in startups that haven't reached problem solution fit yet. They also over-invest in solo founders and founding teams without technical cofounders despite indicators that show that these teams have a much lower probability of success.

4. Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company's operational performance. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. (However, this does not mean that investors don’t have a significant effect on valuations and M&A)

5. Solo founders take 3.6x longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x less likely to pivot.

6. Business-heavy founding teams are 6.2x more likely to successfully scale with sales driven startups than with product centric startups.

7. Technical-heavy founding teams are 3.3x more likely to successfully scale with product-centric startups with no network effects than with product-centric startups that have network effects.

8. Balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams.

9. Most successful founders are driven by impact rather than experience or money.

10. Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%.

11. Startups need 2-3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. This underestimation creates the pressure to scale prematurely.

12. Startups that haven't raised money over-estimate their market size by 100x and often misinterpret their market as new.

13. Premature scaling is the most common reason for startups to perform worse. They tend to lose the battle early on by getting ahead of themselves.

14. B2C vs. B2B is not a meaningful segmentation of Internet startups anymore because the Internet has changed the rules of business. We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team.

At least I'm glad that 1, 2, 6, 8 and 9 are true :p

Cant wait to read the whole report! Thank God it's free This is what I wrote in the field 'Why are you interested to read the report?':

Because I'm startup founder too and I want to know the characteristics of successful startups.
Thank you for the report!

Cap table

A prospect investor ask for a Capital Table / Capital Management Plan. So I googled for Capital Management Plan (cos it sounds more descriptive) but pretty surprised that I got very little sample of CMP, especially those related to fundraising from VCs / Start-ups fundraising tools. The ones I found are mostly about budget request descriptions for school facilities improvement. A bit weird but I worked on it anyway. I love playing with numbers and excel.

So I spent almost few days of work breaking down Urbanesia 2 year financial strategic plan. I was pretty happy with the result. Till just now. I just talked to one of my mentors explaining our progress in fundraising and prospect investors. I showed him the email of the investor who requested for the Capital Table / Capital Management Plan and wanted to get his opinion about my hardwork CPM. But when he saw the list he said, 'Oh they're asking for a Cap table!'

Turns out I have been working on the wrong Capital Table! (but i'll share this with them anyway since it gives a good view of what we're going to do with the money once we get them - I loved working on it, so fun imagining having lots of money! haha ^_^)

I googled Cap Table and there are so many resources talking about them. Like what I originally expected!
This is one of the description I get:
A capitalization (cap) table lists who owns what in a startup. It lists the company’s shareholders and their shares. by Venture Hacks

You can download one of the samples here.

Hope this will help you in fundraising!