Why Most Startups Fail to Launch
I've been sold by the "CEO" that yeah you're right but the desinger is leading the desing, not you and id rather do what you say.
Weahter he was honest or not, this is a red flag talk. Should be decisive, you are right, you are wrong... we do the best in tthe name of the business.
Knowing when to cut cornesr.
I remember having to implement a complex or so did I though authentication flow.
I'm looking at the figma, so many variations, so many arrows, I'm like... wtf. So I ask for a meeting.
We get on the meeting, and soon I've realised, wait a minute.. this is AirBnb flow!
I asked, is this AirBnb? They said YEs BUT.... there's one screen different.
One fucking screen different?! You could have saved a week on this if you told me, the dev you want to cpy Airbnb flow. No point disning this on Figma when you have no money, you just tell me: "I want AirBnb login flow, with this specific change" - would save few hundreds dollars, and a week of time.
This is where knowing when to cut corners is important. Figma is a horrible thing for poor startups, I've seen this again and again - but that's beside the artcle
There's also something to say about the right team - I've seen a lot of people who are medicore at the job, and they secretly tell me they actually do this as a hobby and got a different job; no shit. No wonder why I see soo many flaws.
Interesting thing with the CEO is he would constatnly lie to me, hed tell me he got money, he got budget everyting is on time. I told him again, its best to be ready 2-3weeks before launch date, as if there are any issues, you can fix them by now.
Again, this isn't an iPhone demo - its a simple airbnb like app with simple dashboard etc... very doable in getting the entire product in just a few short weeks from idea to implementation. If you know how.
In business you leave emotions away, its the reason why a business is not "family" and its why a lot of people hate that term. Something goes wrong, you're fired left on the street - that's not what a real family does.
I've told the CEO, I know you have many months to launch and youdon't care about doing somehting to be working NOW, but you never know what life will be like. Its better tohave a working product NOW, than not to have - a mistake startups often do, is they think they have more time and money thn they actually do.
Long story short, ran out of budget, ran out of time, the product never launched, missed his presentation in a different country.
I've tried my best, but everything I said was ignored - I've seen every mistake he does before.
Focusing on a header being 1px taller makes no difference to the end product. Calling yourself that you Experimenting on differnt UI instead of going on what already working is also a big nono - each day adds up, it means less money, further launch date etc... and you don't even know if users will actually like this - you're gambling. You don't want to gamble in business like this.
The key to understand here ist hat you're site is not special because its going to have diffrent "UI", but because o the solution is offers - if the saas offers a solutoin and people use it, you got customers. You got money you can re-invest, and most of the time people will complain on how bad thee UI/UX is AFTER they have used it ,if its indeed bad.
Now, a lot of companies fail or get outcompeted because of bad desing, bad UI/UX, this is a serious thing, however, you can almost always start with bad everything, as long as you provide a good solution - people will naturally assume you're going to improve this down the road and will stick with it.
Some products of course, require a good UI/UX upfront, because that in itself might be the "innovative" business advantge, but that's only true for almost no startup. Most startups are simple.
Most startups never launch. They run out of money.
And if youre a solo dev and you think u got time to experiment: You have to pay for rent and food. Somoene has to pay for it - you.
Building your app costs you money, even if you don't pay for it. If you're not making money in a differnt wa and just spending weeks on your startup, you're founding it yourself.
I have worked with a lot of startups over the years and I've noticed that there's a pattern on why startups fail to launch or if they do launch, its already too late.
I've understood why "speed" and quick delivery matters, I've epeirneced this myself first hand.
First, I think its important to understand that every CEO, every founder every person is different.
Some people starting their own startups or saas are random people with ideas. Some are more serious about it. Some already sold the idea to some venture capitalist and now need to deliver on their promise.
No matter what caliber they are, often they do the same mistakes.
There's a mindset issue and arrogance that prevents most from launghing.
A lot of people I talk to seem a little bit delusional, thinking they are the next Steve Jobs - and look, nothing wrong with being confident, but if you're a random guy that suddenly had an idea and you're about to go broke and have $10k to spend on a project, you're probbaly not Steve Jobs at this very moment. In reality its arrogance.
I'm going to mix Software as a Service ad Agencies thoughts.
Arrogance
Not listening to people you hire
Overly Perfect
Moving Slow
I've mostly been hired as a front-end developer for majority of my prodcuts I've worked on SaaS. Converting desings into functional front-end, creating authentication, working with apis and all of that stuff.
And I've always been building things on my side and gaining a lot of experience, thinking about the full cycle.
As a dev, I've done the most basic mistake, dev and no marketing - a classic.
If you wanted to validate a product, see if there's market for it, it would be better to create a landing page and just sell it before you even build it. Create a payment system that if they buy it, it just errors out, but logs the buy in your database.
Another thing you can do is do user reserach.
You might be thinking, and I had this issue as well - where do I get these users?
Reddit, YouTube, discord, LinkedIn - and you just read old posts. People vent, people give opinions, they do product comparisons - take all of that into account.
Focusing on wrong stuff
If you have
Better way would be to create a landing page
If something can be changed in 5 minutes - don't spend days thinking about it; go with any better solution that just works. Now, what about brand name? For one of my projecst, I've spent 3weeks choosing a name.
I've learned to choose a name in just under 1-2days now, more likely a few minutes in those two days. Its a skill I've earned.
And if I somehow got a domain name thats avilable, but social media is not, I'll just add a prefix to it "name-prefix".
I've seen big companies do it and its just fine. A single name is not going break your entre business.
I've seen bad name, bad desing, outdates businesses, everything shit have a lot of success.
When it comes to agencies, a lot of agencies "claim" to be "attention to detail" and such, and yet imperfectoins are everywhere. Even simple thing like spelling or not working links.
The only reason why they are successfull is becaus there are people who NEED such services or product, and there isn't any other competition.
I've lost plenty of startups because I was too slow launching them. Bare in mind, I'm a dev first, not a marketer, nor a brand strategist, not a SEO guru, so I though I needed this special brand names.
You often hear about these glamours naming with a meaning behind and a logo.
But this is often done with iteratoins and for those specific cases, its because these pepole have been when a lot more domain names were avilable. So getting a good name back in the days - was just easy.
These days, you have a lot of good domain names being bought by agencies who sell them for a profit. A domain doesn't cost $10 anymore, its more like $3000 for a basic domain, and that is the starting point - times change, were in 2025 now.
The good thing is, in some regards, if we flip the script, its a good thing. Because instead of buying EVERY sinigle domain yourslf, which would be expensive, now you're holding specific domain at a $3000 price tag, once your company, busienss makes enough money, spending $3k on a domain name won't be that expensive - the odds are, the domain would have been bough by someone else indefinitelly and hard to contact that person for us, averager people, companies who can't get pass GDPR stuff because the law and company says so - big tech doens't have that problem, they ask they shall receive - its business.
What I've
MVP is an entire product 🙈
If something can be changed quickly, don't spend a lot of time on it, if the chance will stay a long time, think about it
Perfection is good but...
Flashy with no substance
I had a client who ran out of budget.
I've literally made an hour long presentation, going beyondwhat I was meant to do as afront-end dev.
Team
Recomendation
There are a few rules everyone should follow when working on products or agencies.
- Is what I'm spending the time now, can be easily changed in the future? If yes, don't overthink it, if no, spend more time on it. (in regards to my story, changing a UI takes a day or two depends - but it adds up, so best to change it later if its already done)
- Can I re-brand a year from now while having not so perfect name? The answer is yes...
- Do I need a desinger? Probably not. A simple wirerame is more than enough.
- Developer costs more than designers. I often see startups allocate 2/3 of budget on desing, ALWYS falling short on dev - guess what, if you have no money for dev, you're product is just not going to launch; "wel'll get a 3rd world country dev" - yeah, see how that works for you - it won't
I studied others
I often see that a log of companies, people start with somethingn working, it sucks. Good prodducts com with iterations.
You can't possiby make the perfect product on day one - every product i nthehuman history changes. Its a fact, its not an opinion. There are excepetions of coruse, like with everything - but why bet on the exception? We want to increase the chances to succedd,not fail.
Conclusion
There's a lot to launching a product, an agency a startups - and it
If you're good at business, it doesn't matter if you can or can't code - that's trivial. The best people have no idea how to code; and saying "Bill Gates" or "Mark Zuckeberg" without diving into details is trivial.
The key takeaway from this is that you need to launch fast, iterate, get money as fast as you can, figure out a true MVP - what exactly does the product need to be good?