Decoding what makes some startups successful

Ever wanted to know how some startups thrive and become successful and others struggle along, even if they do have good products and/or ideas? A report called the Startup Genome has made an attempt to figure this out. They studied data gathered from 600 startups who chose to fill up their rather lengthy survey (I got to the 75% mark and lost my patience!).

Anyway, they have divided the startups (only internet-based ones) along a development timeline - ie. the stages that all startups have to go through to become a full-fledged profitable player in the market. These stages were: Discovery, Validation, Efficiency and Scale. The report states that by the time a startup moves from the Validation to the Efficiency stage, they should be aware of a single fact - whether 40% of their customers can live without them, and if the answer is 'No', then that is great news!

The report then goes on to divide startups based on the service they provide and the market segment they are targeting. Here they are:

The Automizer
Common characteristics: Self-service customer acquisition, consumer focused, product-centric, fast execution, often automate a manual process.
Examples: Google, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Slideshare, Mint, Groupon, Pandora, Kickstarter, Zynga, Playdom, Modcloth, Chegg, Powerset, Box.net, Basecamp, Hipmunk, OpenTable etc.

The Social Transformer
Common characteristics: Self service customer acquisition, critical mass, runaway user growth, winner take all markets, complex user experience, network effects, typically create new ways for people to interact.
Examples: Ebay, OkCupid, Skype, Airbnb, Craigslist, Etsy, IMVU, Flickr, LinkedIn, Yelp, Aardvark, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Youtube, Dailybooth, Mechanical Turk, MyYearbook, Prosper, Paypal, Quora, Hunch etc.


Click on the tables to view them better.

The Integrator
Common characteristics: Lead generation with inside sales reps, high certainty, product-centric, early monetization, SME focused, smaller markets, often take innovations from consumer internet and rebuild it for smaller enterprises.
Examples: PBworks, Uservoice, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, Dimdim, HubSpot, Marketo Xignite, Zendesk, GetSatisfaction, Flowtown etc.

The Challenger
Common characteristics: Enterprise sales, high customer dependency, complex and rigid markets, repeatable sales process.
Examples: Oracle, Salesforce, MySQL, Redhat, Jive, Ariba, Rapleaf, Involver, BazaarVoice, Atlassian, BuddyMedia, Palantir, Netsuite, Passkey, WorkDay, Apptio,Zuora, Cloudera, Splunk, SuccessFactor, Yammer, Postini etc


Each of these types have their own challenges to overcome in each stage, as the table above shows, and the below table shows that once the startup reaches scale, some forms of revenue generation does not rake in as much money as it did earlier.


The report states, "Subscription and Transaction Fees are by far the most common type of revenue streams. It’s interesting to see what revenue streams startups think will work in stage 2 but have considerable drop off with startups that have actually made it to stage 4. Virtual Goods, Advertising and Data all have major drop offs."

After Page 30, the report has pie-charts which show answers graphically, to questions like these:
-Which experts (Paul Graham, Guy Kawasaki, Steve Blank, Eric Ries etc) were most looked up to.
-Did entrepreneurs start up ventures for money, self-growth or to change the world.
-Whether startups with mentors or without one, succeed in raising capital. The answer is obviously 'with mentors' but the numbers are there to back it up. (For answers to the first two questions, take a look at the report!). But the one main reason it gave, for so many startups failing was due to 'premature scaling'. So startups that did not do each stage properly, did many more 'pivots' (switches/turnarounds) and usually had to go back a step...to learn their lessons again.

The report is a good first attempt and the founders of the Startup Genome Project are looking to drill deeper into the statistics, and give more answers in their future reports.

Tables are taken from the report. Read the full report here:
http://xrl.us/bkqc2d

New waves of growth: Report

An Accenture report highlights the key areas where growth will occur in the near future and how much it will improve the gross domestic product (GDP) of each economy. The report looked at four economies - the UK, US, Germany and India and pointed out how much each of them will stand to benefit if certain parameters were met to ensure this growth happened.

These are the future growth areas to concentrate on:
1. The silver economy
2. The resource economy
3. The multi-technology future
4. The emerging-markets surge

The western economies stand to gain a lot from harnessing the skills of their aging population, so that is one area that India can choose to ignore for the time being. But not for too long either because we will soon have the same problem of retired people who need to be looked after, and we don't have an extensive government funded social security net in place, to do it on our behalf. The three other countries mentioned in the study, do have their governments looking after the welfare of their elderly population.

So if and when India decided to harness this untapped manpower, the report suggests putting steps in place. Such as these:

• Widening the net by retaining older workers in the workforce.
• Ensuring future supply of “hands and minds”.
• Promoting the productive capacity of older workers.

The report further suggests how organisations can help with this.
• Age-proof your human capital by adapting the workplace environment.
• Recycle and diffuse the critical expertise of older workers.
• Develop your silver radar to capture marketshare.

When it comes to the resource economy and the jobs that can be created in this sector, these were the success-making conditions required on a government level.
• Building the skills needed for a green economy, such as technical, engineering and
“green collar” skills.
• Enabling complementary infrastructure to support new technologies and energy solutions.

Meanwhile, organisations needed to ensure the following:
• Develop new products and services to serve the resource economy.
• Integrate a carbon price into business units to identify carbon hotspots.
• Turn scarcity into abundance by transforming waste into assets.

India stands to add Rs 458 billion to the 2020 GDP, 0.3% above the current trajectory. This will add 8,21,000 jobs.

Similarly with technology being used more extensively and adopted in more sectors, India will add Rs 4 trillion to 2020 GDP, which is 2.8% above the current trajectory. This will add 10.8 million jobs. For this to happen, the report suggests:
• Honing digital literacy and skills through technology-enabled learning and tri-sector cooperation.
• Building the technological arteries by extending high-speed Internet access.
• Setting smart regulatory standards to spur adoption and investment in new technologies.

Meanwhile organisations can get started by:
• Embrace cloud computing for savings and flexibility.
• Use technology to pursue polycentric innovation.
• Create open innovation networks to harness the power of customers and stakeholders.

The last area where India stands to reap benefits is as an emerging market. India will see Rs 7 trillion added to its 2020 GDP - 4.9% above the current trajectory and it will add 28.2 million jobs. To get to these numbers, we will need to do the following:
• Build new bridges through trade liberalization, economic diplomacy, new
technologies and collaborative partners.
• Uncover and strengthen comparative advantage and unleashing domestic excellence on to world markets.

While organisations can start on the following to get the same results:
• Create geographic options for inputs and customer markets.
• Be authentically local to tailor marketing and innovation toward emerging markets.
• Design a flexible international operating model to benefit from scale and standardization.

So with this roadmap laid out for India, is someone out there going to pay heed to it?

Read the report in detail here: http://www.accenture.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/PDF/Accenture_Institute_High_Performance_New_Waves_of_Growth_Executive%20Summary.pdf