Zombie Startups
Just came across a nice blog post by Danielle Morrill, Founder of Referly. Here are the excerpts:
My greatest fear as a startup founder isn’t to fail, it is to become a zombie startup. Kind of like in the 6th Sense when Bruce Willis doesn’t realize he is dead and tries to have a nice dinner with his wife, there are startups out there who are still “operating” but might as well not be.
How do you know if you startup is falling into this trap? Here are some hints:
- You don’t want to get out of bed in the morning
- You don’t want to go out in public for fear you’ll have to explain what you do
- You haven’t hit 10% week-over-week growth on any meaningful metric (revenue, active users, etc)
- You’re working on the same idea after 12+ months and still haven’t launched
- You’ve launched a consumer service and have less than 2% week-over-week growth in signups
- You’ve launched an enterprise service and have less than 2% week-over-week growth in revenue pipeline
- You are the CEO and hole yourself up in the offices so you don’t have to talk to employees and can read TechCrunch
- You’ve hired consultants to figure out revenue, culture, or product in a company of less than 10 people
- You’re at SXSW right now reading this post and trying not to cry.
For full post, visit Danielle’s Blog.
