Most statistics show that 33% of all new businesses fail after just 2 years and 56% fail after 4 fighting years. When it comes to software product businesses, the numbers are really scary so… let me leave it at that.  

Ask failed software entrepreneurs, they will agree that ‘building a great software product is necessary but not sufficient.’

Myself and Saba, co-founder, DJargon, met a technology start-up last week and went speechless after hearing this profound geeky statement: “ See dude, we are a start-up, passionate about developing real cool, hi-funda technology, we don’t need marketing yet. By the way… I will have our biz plan send out to you… we have covered marketing in the last section.”

Bang opposite to established rules, we believe that marketing is most critical at the start not when you are starved of leads or when your competitor is eating you alive. All said and done, we are a marketing consultant and we can get biased. We need your help in understanding the real reasons.

I have listed an array of possible reasons. Please pick the top three reasons for software product business failures.

1)    Being only product centric

2)    Less visibility on customer requirements

3)    Friends and well wishers as beta customers

4)    Not able to measure and track ROI

5)    Lack of defined distribution strategy

6)    Product is extremely expensive

7)    Scalability not accounted

   Lack of Branding & Marketing efforts

9)    Product can be easily copied by competition

10) Slow time to market

11) Quality issues

12) Less insights on market needs

13) Technology constraints

14) Lack of business focus