All Unhappy Start-ups Are Alike, Each Happy Start-up Is Unique

Abstract

In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy cautions us that ‘All happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. The so-called Anna Karenina Principle suggests that reasons for failure are manifold and complex, and only one of them is needed for a company to fail. This is true of start-ups; a recent survey by CB Insights found that the number one reason for start-up failure (42 %) was having a product buyers did not want, followed by running out of cash (29 %). But what about the causes of success? As we have seen in the 11 cases examined in this book, every successful (happy) start-up was successful in its own way. It is the Anna Karenina Principle again, only in reverse, whereby all unhappy start-ups are alike, but every happy start-up is happy in its own way. Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, in his book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, echoes a similar conclusion that ‘all happy companies are different because they found something unique that defines their mission and their purpose in this world, whereas all unhappy companies are alike because they somehow failed to escape the essential sameness that is competition’.