The Startup Genome Project is now on the list of my top things to share with other budding entrepreneurs (that list sounds like a good post…forthcoming). Essentially they are gathering tons of data from new startups and then releasing the findings of the data, showing relationships between important aspects of startups.
These 3 critical lessons come just from the “Summary of Additional Findings” page, so I’m not even hitting the main findings of the Startup Genome Report. So you’ll need to still study the report, but at least I’ve pulled out these nuggets for you:
1) A successful founder is…
“Founders that learn are more successful: Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x better user growth.”
2) Complementary co-founders a plus
“Solo founders take 3.6x longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of 2 and they are 2.3x less likely to pivot.”
“Balanced teams with one technical founder and one business founder raise 30% more money, have 2.9x more user growth and are 19% less likely to scale prematurely than technical or business-heavy founding teams.”
3) Keep it small as long as you can
“Premature scaling is the most common reason for startups to perform worse. They tend to lose the battle early on by getting ahead of themselves.”
UPDATE:
Just been reading more and I’m amazed at more amazing data. Like this one:
“Companies that are tracking metrics average a monthly growth rate that is 7x companies that are not tracking metrics and are 60% more likely to raise funding than companies that don’t track metrics.”
SEVEN TIMES the monthly growth rate. That’s not like 10%, 20%, that’s 700%. Wow.
