photo by Shonk

Premature Launch: Venture Suicide

So what’s premature launch got to do with it?

Premature Launch; the act of going to market without adequate capital, key business knowledge, resources, partners, and or contracts necessary for the business to have a better than AVERAGE chance of succeeding!

Premature launch causes a variety of issues that almost always lead to, venture cardiac arrest and often are the cause of venture suicide.

Maybe you’re not in a venture, or even an entrepreneur. You could still be committing venture and organization suicide. Leaders who make plans for change but don’t change themselves are vision killers. Leaders who hire new people, but never give them control, authority and responsibility and can’t commit to one direction are also kill joy’s- suicide bombers of their own ventures.

You see impatience, lack of preparation and inadequate resourcing are the most common mistakes made when launching a new venture. We have the idea and we want it done…

We are unaware of our blind spots, we find it difficult to listen to others who’ve been there before, we horde control instead of build interdependencies, we give responsibility without authority, we act like we know, when we don’t and this leads to being under prepared when we go to market.

And this my friend is why so many ventures die and visions fail! What’s wrong with us entrepreneurs anyways?

“Can’t I bootstrap the entrepreneur asks?”

Of course you can, if you aren’t running a capital intensive, investment upfront venture and you can stomach the drama of not having enough cash to pay vendors or perform. But nothing overcomes blind spots, and what you don’t know will hurt you and your venture. There’s no substitute for surrounding yourself with people who have done it, can do it and want to help you do it, have the resources and time to make it happen.

Most businesses go out of business before they have positive cash flow. I know, I’ve failed. I’ve made these very mistakes, and perhaps you don’t really know, what you don’t know till you fail, but take it from me. It’s far less painful to open those ears and let go of your pride and step back away from the cliff while you have time and room.

Premature launch…may kill your dreams.

Do the work. Review the numbers. Get the resources, partners, contacts, contracts, vendors, capital in place- then go to market and blow the competition away…

Just be forewarned…go to market prematurely, be impatient, launch before you have adequate resources to win, move ahead without market validation or team to execute your differentiated value and you just might find yourself at a funeral not a start up.

Pam Hoelzle