Question: How Should a Good VC Help Its Startup Portfolio to Cross the Chasm of Death?
And Not Wasting LPs' Money?
Most entrepreneurs spend much of their effort on the value creation process: identifying and analysing in deep a problem, designing and developing a new product (good, service, solution) that - they believe - will solve the problem, and analyzing the competitors, the market.
Even if this process is mandatory (just try to launch a startup without identifying a serious problem - ie a negative situation - or an opportunity - ie normal situation that could be improved in a remakable way - and see what happens), we know all that 90% of startups (who have done "everything" right) will fail during their first 3 years!
- You identified a serious problem (with negative consequences for those concerned and with a high frequency) ✅
- You designed and developped a cutting-edge and sharp MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that will - for sure - solve that problem. ✅
- You launched and operated the best marketing plan ever since the invention of sliced bread, you got remarkable traction from the innovators and early-adopters (niche strategy). ✅
- You impressed seed VCs and you raised funds from them ✅ and you expected with your investor cash to boost your operation and marketing with the goal to diffuse your innovation from your innovator/early-adopter users/clients to the rest of the World ... and you FAILED! ❌⛔❌
The reason should be sought in the DEEP PSYCHOLOGY of the Human mind, our behaviours are deeply rooted in our biological and sociocultural anthropology !
You failed to find the "Product / Market Fit" Holy Grail even after several pivotations as preached by Lean startup Gurus. People just ignored your amazing awesome unique wonderful creative inventive value proposition. They continue to buy the bad product/solution or just to do nothing when they face the problem and accept the cost and frustration of its negative consequences!
"People are stupid! They didn't get my genius!" - last words declared by an exhausted entrepreneur on his deathbed.
This is the story of 90% of startups who did everything right!
How long could we afford ignoring the Last Mile*?
*The Last Mile is the title of an excellent book written by Dr. Dilip Soman, Professor of behavioral science at the Rotman School of Management - University of Toronto.
Since the remarkable emergence of Behavioural Sciences (pluridisciplinary field of study: economics, management, anthropology, sociology, psychology, neurosciences ... -) - awarded by five Nobel Prizes - studying the Human irrational behaviours and how to influence people to adopt benefical new behabiours, we have now all the tools to help brilliant startups to build the bridge they need to diffuse their innovation to the World!
If we care of LPs' money (Limited Partner investors in VC funds), the next generation of Seed-VCs must have an internal Behaviour Science agency that will nurture their startups with gold nugget insights in order to close that gap, to cross the river called chasm of death!
We are working on that ... Stay Tuned.
Answer: By Building a Bridge Made of Insights from Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Ari Massoudi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arimassoudi/