Examining reasons for startup failure within the founder's mind

Tom Eisenmann posts over at Platforms and Networks on founder-related reasons for startup failure. It's a great summary post, with lots of useful links, including lessons from MBank favorites Steve Blank, Mark Suster and Jerry Colonna. Here's a taste:

If entrepreneurial success hinges on a founder’s mastery of psychology, it stands to reason that a founder’s flawed ego is often the root cause of startup failure.

Categorizing causes of entrepreneurial failure is tricky. Asking entrepreneurs why their venture failed doesn’t always yield reliable answers. To bolster our fragile egos, we credit our successes to our own brilliance and skill, and we attribute our failures to the shortcomings of others or to events outside our control. This pattern is so deeply ingrained that psychologists have labeled it the Fundamental Attribution Error.

Furthermore, just as a living organism might die for many reasons—for example, hunger, predation, or illness—startup failure has diverse causes. Paul Graham cites 18 reasons why startups fail; in her post, What Goes Wrong, reprinted in Managing Startups, Graham’s partner at Y Combinator, Jessica Livingston, warns founders that they must navigate a “tunnel full of monsters that kill.”

The post is well worth reading in full.