When you start a new business, efforts + performance do not deliver the outcomes you want. Why does that happen sometimes?

I think at that point you should rethink your strategy and plan, have a market research again and see what is the key factor that is not getting things done and reevaluate your plan and strategy according to the new facts.

Not sometimes, according to Forbes% startup businesses are failure. Why, because of the following:

Fortune reported the “TOP REASON” that startups fail,: “They make products no one wants.” A careful survey of failed startups determined that% of them identified the “lack of a market need for their product” as the single biggest reason for their failure.

A startup can’t segment its responsibilities like that. Things are far more organic in a startup, meaning that roles and responsibilities will overlap. Small things can turn into large things. Some of the most important components of a startup are those pesky issues of business process, business model, and scalability.

Growth — fast growth — is what entrepreneurs crave, investors need, and markets want. Rapid growth is the sign of a great idea in a hot market. Growth leads to more growth, which leads to even more growth. A startup should not be satisfied with marginal single-digit growth rates after many months of operating. If the growth doesn’t happen after a certain amount of time, then the growth will not happen. A company that is not growing is shrinking.

Another  major reason why startups fail is that they “ran out of cash.” Why did they run out of cash? Because they didn’t grow fast enough. If your startup can grow fast, you can effectively bypass some of the biggest startup killers — losing to the competition, losing customers, losing personnel, and losing passion.

Every startup is backed by a powerful team of people. The more versatile that team, the better chance they have of succeeding.

“Versatility” is often viewed in a limited sense, that of possessing more than one skill or talent. Versatility in the startup environment involves much more than someone’s skillset. It involves mindset. Startup teams must possess the ability to change products, adjust to different compensation plans, take up a new marketing approach, shift industries, rebrand the business, or even tear down a business and start all over again.

It’s all about recovering from blows. Teams that are able to recover together, also possess the unique trait of harmoniously working together through tough times.

I’ve also noticed that startups with co-founders have a higher success rate than companies with a single founder. Having a cofounder creates a partnership. There’s much more accountability, which helps you to avoid some of the pitfalls of a single charismatic leader. Plus, a cofounder will have skills that you don’t have.

Presence  of global companies in the local market would increase the ratio of high level competition on the niche market which Startup companies could not bear of.  

Thanks Sidra for asking such an important question which is close to my heart and  consultancy work I am doing.

First of all remember that don’t get de motivated. It is normal that startup business did not give desired results as expected in short term.

My two cents as follow:

You need to setup some Key Performance indicators for startup business like Customer acquisition (No. of customers to be introduced, engaged in a certain time frame), cost/ customer acquisition.

The 2nd KPI is Rate of repeat either purchase of follow up visits to the contacts. This is Customer retention time

The last but not the least is customer monetization for which you need to think and put target value for customer lifetime value, basket size, revenue/sale and profit per sale

Your KPIs should focus on driving product-market fit so startups should focus on activities in a virtuous cycle ASAP. You need to fist identify your success factor and accordingly set your KPI’s.

Innovation is a process that is best managed with a long term perspective, not necessarily measured in long time increments (e.g., months, years) but rather in completion of targeted goals. This requires separating the innovation process into three implementable stages: 1) identification of goals and exploration activities, 2) short term deliverables and 3) near term development.

Any business, new or mature, have risks and can lead to fail. 

New businesses should be also planned about the possible fails that can occur and predict possible solutions to resolve those.

Sometimes is not easy to identify the reasons why some strategies failed, that´s why our businesses assumption should be based in solid information, statistics, studies and so on. Any big effort that you can apply in some phase of a strategy to correct it, it will drive you to spend more time/resources/budget/etc to redraw the strategy. 

Since the market and the public are in constant (almost) mutation, influenced by the competitors, the PEST changes, the SWOT influences, etc, the most important key for the success that you should have is the flexibility (structure, HR, etc) to redraw your strategy and fast adaptation to the present business needs. 

BENCHMARKING studies/plans should be made too. They will give you some important leads/measures to study which are the best strategy practices in your sector/market/etc and they will provide you too valid information about the mistakes/fails that those companies made. 

Check here for some more > Benchmarking < info