CB Insights - dishonest founders

Hi there, 

We analyzed hundreds of startup failure post-mortems to understand why founders believed their startups failed.

The results are interesting, but the #1 reason founders gave is wrong.

It simply highlights that we founders are not really honest with ourselves.

Yes — we lie to ourselves.

Founders cite a lack of cash as the no. 1 reason for failure.

This is wrong.

The inability to raise or running out of money IS NOT why you failed. 

Running out of/not being able to raise investment is an outcome and not an input for failure. Correlation, causation, blah blah blah.

In good news, the subsequent 3 reasons founders give for why they failed are far more honest:

• Nobody wanted your isht

• Other people's isht was better

• This isht wasn't a real biz

Cuz 1 of these 3 happened, you ran out of cash or nobody would back you. In today’s funding climate ($156.2 billion with a B last quarter — aka bonkers) where everyone is a unicorn (full list of 784 unicorns here), running out of cash means there was another problem with you, the team, the business, the product, etc.

BTW, I totally get it that it's easier to blame the “markets” or “investors” for your failure.

If only investors had given us more cash, we'd have been successful. It sounds plausible and removes some accountability and makes the sting of failure hurt less.

Money gives you runway.  

It doesn’t buy the ability to execute. 

In fact, too much money (aka being foie-gras'd) as a startup can be bad for you.

Of course, there's a lot to learn from post-mortems, and it is awesome that founders write these.

Here are 378 startup post-mortems if you want to dig into these individually.

And if that’s not enough, and you've not gotten full of fail yet, here are 210 of the biggest and costliest startup failures of all time. 

Forever young

A flood of new entrants pushed healthcare’s early-stage deal share above 50% in Q2’21 — the highest it’s been since Q3’19. 

We break down where healthcare funding is headed, market drivers, top deals, and more in our State Of Healthcare Q2’21 report.

VC royalty

While 67% of unicorn investors have backed only one unicorn company (valued at $1B+), Tiger Global Management has pulled away from the pack. The firm has more than 120 unicorns in its portfolio. 

See the rest of the top 10 here.

CBI analysts in the house

Next week, hear from CB Insights Principal Healthcare Analyst Jeffrey Becker about everything big tech is doing in healthcare. You can reserve your spot for the live webinar (August 18) here. 

On August 19, CBI Intelligence Analyst Oliver Yu will get you up to speed on fintech’s record quarter, including details on the 19 public exits and SPAC trends in the space. Register here.
 

You’ll be able to ask each of them any questions that are on your mind.

600M x ILY 

6 years ago, I started signing off on the CBI newsletter with the words “I love you.” Crazy to believe that I’ve now sent those 3 words 600M+ times.

TBH, it started as a joke or Easter egg to see if folks were actually reading the newsletter.

Thankfully, you were :) 

Over time, the reaction to those odd words in the newsletter has been amazing. I’ve gotten several thousand responses back which are positive. Of course, there are some folks who aren’t as positive but those have been few and far between.

Yesterday, I got one of those amazing email responses that made my day so wanted to share.

Banks boarding the blockchain

Out of the top 100 banks by assets under management, 55 have invested in cryptocurrency and/or blockchain-related companies.

Find out more in Blockdata's recent article here.

Demo your product at Future of Health
 

At Future of Health (Dec. 8-9, virtual), we’ll be featuring 40+ live demos of tech solutions introducing healthcare institutions to technologies that can transform their businesses in categories including telehealth, digital therapeutics, AI-enabled diagnostics, drug discovery, and clinical trials tech.
 

Does your company have something great to share? Apply to demo here by this Friday, August 13.
 

We're especially looking for those in pharmaceuticals, so please apply today if you've got a product in:

• Drug discovery

• Pharma supply chain

• Clinical trials tech

See more info here or register for the event today.

Business Insider. Victor Chatenay covers Coinbase’s most recent acquisition and references CB Insights research. 

CNBC. Ari Levy (@levynews) covers fintech’s earnings bonanza and cites CB Insights data.

TechCrunch. Alex Wilhelm (@alex) and Anna Heim (@abracarioca) discuss VC activity in China using CB Insights research.
 

P.S. Our friends at Andreessen Horowitz are hiring for an Associate Partner - Enterprise Market Development. Apply here.

New reward. Some companies, like AT&T and McDonald’s, are partnering with fintechs to offer fractional shares and ETFs as loyalty perks.

Financial Times  

Hot doge. Oscar Mayer is auctioning off a one-of-a-kind pack of hot dogs that includes 10,000 dogecoins.

Hypebeast 

Shut it down. Idling vehicles waste 6B gallons of fuel each year, according to the US Department of Energy. 

Bloomberg

Waiting for the skies to clear. SoftBank is hitting pause on new investments in China as the country makes moves to rein in its tech sector.

WSJ

Transformational. Researchers have created a robot with skin that can change colors like a chameleon to match its background.

BBC