GoKawiilPosted on by steve blank
Your Startup Is Probably Dead On Arrival
If you started a company more than two years ago, it’s likely that many of your assumptions are no longer true.
You need to stop coding, building, recruiting, fund raising, etc., and take stock of what changed around you. Or your company will die.
I just had coffee with Chris, a startup founder I invested in six years ago. Since then he’s been heads-down focused working on 1) a complex autonomy problem, 2) in an existing market with 3) a unique business model.
Chris is now starting to raise his first large fundraising round. In looking at his investor deck I realized that while he’s been heads down, the world has changed around him – by a lot. The software moat he built with his 5-year investment in autonomy development is looking less unique every day. Autonomous drones and ground vehicles in Ukraine have spawned 10s, if not 100s, of companies with larger, better funded development teams working on the same problem.
While Chris has been fighting for adoption for this niche market (one that is ripe for disruption, but the incumbents still control), the market for autonomy in an adjacent market – defense – has boomed. In the last five years VC Investment in defense startups has gone from zero to $20 billion/year. His product would be perfect for contested logistics and medical evacuation. But he had literally no clue these opportunities in the defense market had occurred.
While there’s still a business to be had (Chris’s team has done amazing system integration with an existing airborne platform that makes his solution different from most), – it’s not the business he started.
Catching up with Chris made me realize that most startups older than two years old have an obsolete business plan – and a technical stack and team that’s likely out of date.
Just as a reminder if you haven’t been paying attention.
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