The Resource Guide is created by Grace Liu and Gabriella Velazquez
Updated on Janurary 8, 2022
This Guide introduces resources that help you learn why startups fail and how to improve the odds of success. We also included selective sources to help you understand how to control risk, learn from failures or use failures to grow your business.
The courses selected can be audited for free and you can find the audit instructions for Coursera and Edx courses.
Improving the Odds of Success for Early-Stage Startups (Gallup)
Gallup Builder Talent Tuesday Webcast Series. Learn how to radically improve early-stage startups' odds of success -- including what Gallup's BP10 can do.
Why Startups fail with Tom Eisenmann (Stanford E-Corner)
Tom Eisennman, in this conversation with Stanford professor Tom Byers, he shares insights from his book “Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success” (Currency, March 2021), which analyzes common patterns that sink both early- and late-stage startups, and also proposes a road map for deciding when to pull the plug and how to fail better.
Tom Eisennman on why startups fail (Seedcamp)
In this episode of This Much I Know, our hosts Kate McGinn and Carlos Espinal have a chat with Tom Eisenmann to cover topics at the heart of founder journeys. This includes a few key factors to keep in mind for early-stage founders, such as MVP testing or upfront customer discovery work. Tune in to hear more about what Tom observes in academia around patterns both founder and investors tend to follow!
Why Do So Many Startups Fail? (Chicago Booth Review)
Chicago Booth Professors discuss why so many startups fail.
What Can We Learn from Failure? (Chicago Booth)
Google’s Banks Baker, Chicago Booth’s Harry L. Davis, David Hill of TIL Gaming, and Eunhee Sumner of Starbucks discuss the insights we can gain when we don’t succeed.
Using Innovation Accounting for Valuation and Risk Management (Lean Startup Co.)
Whether you’re in Finance — or just report *to* Finance — you’ll want to catch David Binetti’s talk on Innovation Accounting. David will show how to calculate the ROI and Risk of innovation projects while avoiding common traps that can doom entrepreneurs before they begin.
De- Risking Your Startup (Silicon Valley Bank)
This virtual workshop focused on how startups can develop a risk management framework and eliminate the exposure that can make investors nervous. The conversation was led by: Travis Hedge, Co-Founder and VP of Business Development at Vouch and Sarah Schaaf, Esq., General Manager at Paradigm and Co-founder of Headnote.
Use Failure to Grow Your Business (Harvard Business Review)
Rita McGrath, Columbia Business School professor, explains how companies can plan and pursue an aggressive growth agenda by framing their strategic growth.
How to Drive Risk Out of your Growth Initiatives (Harvard Business Review)
Bruce Harreld discusses his recent Harvard Business Review article, “Six Ways to Sink a Growth Initiative,” describing six common mistakes that executives make when pursuing growth initiatives and offering guidelines for leading these initiatives.
Successful Startups Take Smart Risks and Fail Quickly (GIST Network)
Ryan Babineaux, co-author of Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win, participated in a panel discussion about failure and entrepreneurship during our November TechConnect program, Failing Forward: Using Setbacks to Drive Success. In this excerpt, Ryan talks about key ways to fail smart and fail cheaply.
Why Startups Should Consider Litigation Risks (HuschBlackwell)
A legal battle can be lengthy, expensive, and create bad publicity. Startups are experiencing a rise in litigation and the webinar will focus on three growing risks to startups and provide practical steps to prevent these types of lawsuits.
The 5 Things That Kill Startups Post Seed Rounds (Y Combinator)
How problems finding product market fit, listening to investors, copying startups around you, slow product development, and co-founder conflict kill startups.
11 Corporate Habits That Kill Your Company's Innovation Engine (Stragegyzer)
Strategyzer co-founder Alex Osterwalder walks through the 11 bad corporate habits that can kill or block your innovation engine. How are these habits stalling your organization's future?
Testing Before Building Is The Key To Success (Stragegyzer)
Strategyzer co-founder Alex Osterwalder and Strategyn founder Tony Ulwick discuss the importance of customer testing before even building a solution.
Avoid Failure by Following These Marketing Principles with Seth Godin
In this episode we sit down with bestselling author Seth Godin as he breaks down the difference between direct marketing and brand marketing and which one your business should invest in. Then in our second segment, George Kamel talks to two of Ramsey Solutions’ top marketing leaders, Jen Sievertsen and Trey Sheneman. They give you some tactical tips for how you can apply brand and direct marketing in your business right now.
Harvard i-lab | Startup Secrets: Roadmap to Success
Michael Skok will share his roadmap of what is needed to build a startup, milestones along the way, and how to pull that pitch together to get the venture attention and funding your idea deserves. After the workshop you should have a better understanding of the holistic checklist to think through your venture in a business-like plan.
Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders
A candid exploration of the entrepreneurial journey where informed leaders share personal stories of the secrets and setbacks behind real success.
From Code to Company: Lessons in Building a Software Company
The Fidelity Investments "Leadership in Technology" Executive Speakers Series presents Joe Colopy, Founder & CEO, Bronto Software. His talk topic is "From Code to Company: Lessons in Building a Software Company".
You can search Harvard Business Review to learn more articles on this topic. You can also check if your university library has a subscription to the Business Source Complete database, which provides full-text access to Harvard Business Review articles, or use the library’s interlibrary loan service to access the article.
The Top 12 Reasons Startups Fail (CBInsights)
Why Startups Fail | Lessons From 150 Founders (Wilburlabs)
Why Start-ups Fail - It’s not always the horse or the jockey (Harvard Business Review)
Why Your Startup Won’t Last (Harvard Business Review)
The Simple Question That Can Make or Break a Startup (Harvard Business Review)
Start-Ups That Last (Harvard Business Review)
Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.
Koning, R., Hasan, S., & Chatterji, A. (2019). Experimentation and startup performance: Evidence from A/B testing (No. w26278). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Scientific Approach to Testing Ideas Helps Startups Fail and Scale Faster
To answer that question, Sharique Hasan and Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji, both strategy professors at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, studied more than 35,000 high-tech startups founded between 2008 and 2013. They summarized their findings in “Experimentation and Startup Performance: Evidence from A/B Testing,” which is forthcoming in the journal Management Science and co-authored by Rem Koning of Harvard Business School.
Triebel, C., Schikora, C., Graske, R., & Sopper, S. (2018). Failure in startup companies: why failure is a part of founding. In Strategies in Failure Management (pp. 121-140). Springer, Cham.
Lizarelli, F. L., Torres, A. F., Antony, J., Ribeiro, R., Salentijn, W., Fernandes, M. M., & Campos, A. T. (2021). Critical success factors and challenges for Lean Startup: a systematic literature review. The TQM Journal.
Banerji, D., & Reimer, T. (2019). Startup founders and their LinkedIn connections: are well-connected entrepreneurs more successful?. Computers in Human Behavior, 90, 46-52.
Ladd, T. (2018). Does the business model canvas drive venture success?. Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. Vol. 20 (1), pp. 57-69. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRME-11-2016-0046
Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.
Eisenmann, Tom. The Fail-Safe Startup. 2021. Print.
Eisenmann, Thomas R. Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success. 2021. Print.
Feinleib, David. Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed. 2012. Print.
Harvard Business Review. HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Risk. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020. Print.
Josephs, Adam, and Brad Rubenstein. Risk Up Front: Managing Projects in a Complex World. 2018. Print.
Read, Stuart. Effectual Entrepreneurship. 2017. Print.
Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Print.
Saxton, Todd, M K. Saxton, and Michael Cloran. The Titanic Effect: Successfully Navigating the Uncertainties That Sink Most Startups. 2019. Print.
Thomke, Stefan H. Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. 2020. Print.
Shapiro, Eileen C, and Howard H. Stevenson. Make Your Own Luck: 12 Practical Steps to Taking Smarter Risks in Business. New York: Portfolio, 2005. Print.
Wasserman, Noam. The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2012. Print.
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Tom Eisenmann is the Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School; Peter O. Crisp Chair of Harvard Innovation Labs; and faculty co-chair of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the Harvard MS/MBA Program, and the Harvard College Technology Innovation Fellows Program.