90% of startups fail. For early-stage founders, this can come from both false positives or negatives. Two factors include: bias towards early adopters vs. mainstream customers, that are mostly necessary to scale, or giving up too early on a project that turns out to be a billion-dollar business idea a couple months later. Tom Eisenmann, Professor at Harvard Business School, discusses this and much more in his recently published book ‘The Fail-Safe Startup‘. In this episode of This Much I Know, our hosts Kate McGinn and Carlos Espinal have a chat with Tom 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!
If the above player doesn’t work for you, you can also listen directly from our Soundcloud page.
Listen to similar episodes like this one:
2. This Much I Know: Professor Luke O’Neill on the intersection of academia and health tech
3. This Much I Know: Accel’s Harry Nelis on KAYAK, IPO strategy, and the right founder-VC relationship
