Here’s a failure warning list for the good of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs everywhere. It’s inevitable that most startups will in fact fail. But as long as you build a product people find useful, you should be okay.
Your startup may be failing if:
1. You saw how much Kiko sold for on eBay and are considering following in their footsteps.
2. You have 100 users after 3 months of launch and most of them are your friends.
3. VCs are not returning your emails and phone calls. In my experience, VCs are generally willing to look at a business plan and respond to emails and phone calls but only if they see value in your startup. If every VC you contact ignores you, there is definitely something wrong.
4. No one has blogged about your startup. Bloggers are a powerful source of information on Web 2.0. If they do not see any value in your business, they won’t write about it. And if no one writes about it, no one hears about it.
5. You are considering using MySpace as a marketing medium to get your startup noticed. If your beautiful AJAX super social website is not getting noticed at all, MySpace is not going to help. It actually makes you look worse.
6. You constantly worry about your website’s Alexa rank and think up creative ways to drive it up.
7. When a similar competing startup launches, you lose sleep over it.
8. You start calling your startup a project instead of a company.
9. You do not have a business strategy beyond the hope of getting tons of users.
10. You realize that maybe you should have stayed in school instead of dropping out to create the next Facebook / MySpace / YouTube.
