Entrepreneurship is often thought of as an art, a skill you hone over time – but is there a science to it too? That’s what The Startup Genome Report, a new in-depth study, set out to discover.
Based on information submitted by over 650 Internet startups, the report sets out clear stages of a startup’s development and identifies distinct types of companies. The project aims to make this data available widely in order to increase the success rate of startups and accelerate pace of innovation around the world.
Cracking the startup ‘genetic code’
The Startup Genome Report is the work of three men – Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, Max Marmer and Ron Berman – who set out to ‘crack the code’ behind success or failure amongst Internet startups. The team is also responsible for the Blackbox accelerator and the Blackbox Mansion, which we recently profiled as a “Playboy mansion for geeks“. So, what prompted this new, in-depth study? “Max and I came together in December to find a scalable way to accelerate startups,” explains Herrmann. “We were inspired by the global explosion of entrepreneurship and its positive impact.”
“The Kauffman foundation recently showed that more than 90% of all job growth in the US comes from highly scalable startups,” Herrmann says. “Still, more than 90% of funded startups fail - we set out to find a way that can reduce this massive failure rate of startups. The Startup Genome project is the result of us investigating the problem in order to figure out a solution.”
The result of responses from a total of 666 startups, the report is a compelling first draft at turning entrepreneurship into hard data that could help founders and investors measure the success, and failure, of Internet startups.
Despite its potential value, Herrmann says that the report is being given away for free “because it will help many entrepreneurs to make the world a better place and that’s what we set out to do.”
“A price tag I feel would be a disgrace that would seriously question our intentions. Also, this report has only been possible due to almost 700 entrepreneurs sharing their data with us and due to many smart minds like Paul Graham, Dave McClure, Sean Ellis, Eric Ries, Steve Blank, etc. who shared their lessons learned openly. We see this report as our contribution to the startup ecosystem.”
The full report (which you can find here) is a lengthy document, but well worth spending time with. We’ve boiled down some of the key points and some of the most interesting findings over the next few pages.
So, read on to find out about the different types of startups, the stages of development they go through and some of the interesting information uncovered by the report.
