By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge


I came across this interesting Silicon Valley Business Journal article entitled "Why do startups fail? Here are the top 20 reasons" which summarizes a large post-mortem analysis of startup failures conducted by CB Insights

One quick takeaway to highlight:

"After reading through every single of the 101 post-mortems, we’ve learned two things. One — there is rarely one reason for a single startup's failure. And two — across all these failures, the reasons are very diverse."

Here's the top twenty reasons:
(Note: percentages don't add up to 100 because sometimes there are multiple reasons for failure)

1. Building a solution in search of a problem: Falling in love with an idea or building it out with market validation. 42 percent cited this. 

2. Cash Out. No Mas: We'll assume this wasn't due to financial mismanagement or malfeasance but a natural outcome of a sane burn rate over an extended period with trailing revenues of a lean nature. 29 percent reported this.

3. Wrong team: Lacking key members or skill sets This was cited by 23 percent of the companies. 

4. Beaten by the competition: About 19 percent of the companies reported this.

5. Pricing/cost issues: Reported by 18 percent in the study.

6. Poor product: This was reported by 17 percent of the companies.

7. Need/lack business model: A lack of a viable model killed 17 percent of these companies.

8. Poor marketing: Knowing how to code or build good products isn't enough. Reported by 14 percent of the companies.

9. Ignoring customers: 14 percent of the companies in the studied pointed to this.

10. Mis-timed product (releases): 13 percent of the companies in the survey reported this. A Calxeda employee told CB Insights, “We moved faster than our customers could move. We moved with tech that wasn't really ready for them... We were too early.”

11. Lost focus: 13 percent reported this.

12. Founder/investor strife: Creative tension is far different than toxic infighting. 13 percent of the companies succumbed to this.

13. Pivot gone bad: As has been said, "The pivot used to be called the f****up".  10 percent pointed to this.

14: Lack passion: The passion to stick it out, to execute. 9 percent identified this as the reason.

15: Bad location: For hiring/retaining talent, customers, investors and so on. This was cited by 9 percent.

16. No financing/investor interest: This was pointed to by 8 percent.

17. Legal challenges: Cited by 8 percent of the companies.

18. Don't use network/advisers: Again cited by 8 percent of the companies.

19. Burnout: Never a good thing, many reasons why a team can burn out. 8 percent pointed to this as the culprit.

20: Failure to pivot: As has been said earlier, "The pivot used to be called the F****up" and while that may be true it doesn't change the fact that continuing down the same messed up path is going to get your any place faster (other than bankruptcy court) and certainly no where better. 7 percent cited this.

James will speaking on the very important career-related topic of "I'm 40 Now! Is It Really Game Over For Me In Japan's Job Market?" at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on November 20th.

Among job seekers, arguably no group is more negatively affected by this brutal reality than 40+ year old job seekers.

Many 40+ year old job seekers are shocked to find this is the reality not only in the broader US economy but even in vaunted Silicon Valley which is the supposed Mecca of open-mindedness and where a meritocracy has ruled for decades.

And yet, for how bad it is in the US and even Silicon Valley, 40+ year old job seekers soon come to find that it's often much, much worse in Japan. Terrible. Impossibly frustrating. Depressing. These are words that come to mind when seeking employment in Japan as a 40+ year old candidate.

But how can this be the case in Japan, when Japan still has an economy which is the 3rd largest economy in the world and which is moving to further internationalize its businesses as rapidly as possible in the face of both falling domestic demand and a severe shortage of experienced workers.

The bottom line is this: Older, deeply experienced job seekers quickly run into 5 seemingly insurmountable brick walls..

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge


Yesterday I came across what I felt to be a provocatively brilliant quote by Elon Musk which I subsequently posted into my LinkedIn Update and Facebook Status feeds.

"The reason I haven't taken SpaceX public is the goals of SpaceX are very long-term, which is to establish a city on Mars."
-- Elon Musk

The next day, I awoke to find this little gem of a comment from my friend Chikako Uchinami of synopsis.TODAY below it:

"Elon is instructive of the principle of Divine Right.
He's not always right, but when he is he is the most interesting man in the world.
You can't inherit Divine Right- you take it."

-- Chikako Uchinami

Besides being incredibly insightful, Chikako brilliantly articulated the concept and application Divine Right

Divine Right.

And that's what it is. 

It 's not given. It can only be taken. The right can only be asserted.

Think about the power of those statements. 

Now think about the power and effectiveness of any leader (including you) who not only understands but lays claim to and assertively wields Divine Right.

By James Santagata
Principal Consultant, SiliconEdge

The Sun Also Rises (陽はまた昇る ||  Yō wa mata noboru), starring Ken Watanabe (foreigners will know him from his appearances in The Last Samurai and Inception) is a riveting drama that captures the development in Japan of the nascent and soon to be ubiquitous VHS video format.

Starting as a stealth or more accurately, an unapproved Skunk Works projects within JVC (Nihon Victor Corporation) it culminated in 
the development and release of the new VHS standard to the industry.

On top of that, JVC's new format was royalty-free and competed directly against Akio Morita and his uber-powerful Sony Corporation (when you think of Akio Morita, think  about Steve Jobs before  Steve Jobs was even on the scene) and their Betamax.

Lots to takeways from this movie in terms of government pressure and cronyism in the form of MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry / 通商産業省 / Tsūshō-sangyō-shō) officials who had backed Betamax and, therefore, wanted JVC to deep-six their VHS format. 

Other key takeways:
- Intrapreneurship
- No Box Thinking
- Technical Innovation 
- Market-Focused Feedback Loops to ferret out new Use Cases
- Tenacity / Being Relentless
- True Leadership
- New Business Models (royalty-free industry standard)

In summation, this docu-drama really demonstrates Japanese business ethics, working styles, attention to detail and cultural expectations.