Why It’s so Difficult to Disrupt

How rising VC expectations are causing founders to ignore user experiences in favor of unsustainable growth.

The trouble with innovation…

Through my experience as a repeat technical startup founder, I’ve found the greatest difficulty in developing a new technology is not getting something to function. It’s discovering that a user’s tolerance for learning a new workflow is frustratingly low. People are seeing something that’s different, but they are experiencing it through the lens of expectations they’ve been refining over their entire lives… expectations anchored by existing solutions that are measurably worse than the shiny new one.

There is some amount of friction inherent to the adoption of any innovation. A company must immediately convey the value of what they’ve spent months, or years, building. In the world of software, there’s a very brief window of time when a potential user can be convinced that a product meets their need. If a user is not aware of their need at this point in time, then the company faces the additional challenge of educating a consumer. Good Luck!

In no other context is this friction as essential to overcome quickly as in that of a startup. Startups are organizations with a lit fuse. Financial backers have given them a chance to test a new idea. They are operating at a loss, and will go out of business unless they raise additional capital in the near future… and that’s with a dedicated team working long hours at below-market salaries. Investors, employees, and even the founders assume this risk because they believe that their efforts will eventually be rewarded by a lucrative market segment in dire need of their offering.

Why so many startups fail so early.

​Everybody knows most startups fail, but what’s surprising is that 70% of seed-funded companies do not survive long enough to raise a subsequent round. In the venture community, this trend is better known as the Series A Crunch, and I believe it’s a consequence of rushing to market without having established sufficient product desirability — or, in Venture Capitalist parlance, traction.

70% of seed-funded startups fail to raise their next round (Source: Mattermark)

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