Startups usually have a group of passionate people pursuing a common objective. But even so, the reality is that 90 percent of them fail. Building a sustainable business takes more than a good idea, drive and passion, even if we think they are the key ingredients for tasting success. To help us understand why some startups thrive while others stagnate or fail, it’s useful to examine startup success stories.
“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” –Guy Kawasaki, Alltop Co-Founder and Entrepreneur
Here are 6 successful startups and one valuable Lesson we can take away from each:
1. 2U
2U partners with top universities to bring their degree programs online. The company, which has raised nearly $100 million in venture capital and is a leading player in the education-tech world, offers infrastructure, marketing and software-as-a-service technology to help universities digitize and scale their programs. At the heart of 2U‘s success lies highly advanced learning-management software and suite of great tech products that support students, faculty and the entire learning and campus-management processes. By focusing on technology and hiring some of the best technologists in the industry, 2U set itself apart. They made the committed to develop best-in-breed technology.
2. Pandora
Pandora is a personalized music-recommendation service which tailors stations to suit a listener’s music taste and relies on feedback about songs and artists. By providing a personalized listening experience, individuals enjoy music selected just for them, which gives users a unique experience, a feeling that they matter, and most of all deep brand loyalty. Pandora is expected to raise $231 million in the sale of 10 million shares. Offer and keep personalization was its objective from the beginning, a lesson we should learn.
3. Gett
Gett is a mobile ride-ordering app which makes it easy to order a taxi or black car in 20 cities including New York, London, Tel Aviv and Moscow. The app knows about going global but be customized for each market. Gett first launched in Israel, became a resounding success, and then expanded to Europe and the U.S. Now Gett has more than 1 million users and about 1, 500 enterprise clients, including Google. Gett is revolutionizing how people navigate cities and has raised $42 million.
4. Kaltura
Kaltura is an open-source video platform for managing, publishing and distributing video content. The platform successfully targets and caters to several niches: enterprise, education and media. Kaltura has built specific features and functions tailored to the needs of each of these sectors and is being used by 300,000 enterprise, education and media organizations, including Groupon, Bank of America, Harvard and HBO. Having recently raised $25 million, this startup’s success illustrates the importance of targeting several niches. So it’s not a bad thing having target several niches, but don’t target everyone, just select a few key niches and master them.
5. Taboola
The objetive of this startup was a having a place where the end-users could have the control of their content. Taboola, which is at a revenue run rate of $100 million–and with only 120 employees, one of the highest revenue generating companies per employee in the world–is a content-discovery platform that recommends video and other content that users are likely to be interested in based on the content they’re currently viewing. While not the only content-recommendation platform, Taboola has decided to take a forward-looking approach of democratizing recommended content by putting control in the hands of end-users.
6. Voxy
We can learn from Voxy about how important is not to try to do too much at once. Voxy is a mobile app that helps Spanish Speakers learn English through bite-size, daily lessons based on real-life experiences. With advanced proprietary technology, the company could have expanded service to other languages, but decided to stay focused on teaching English, particularly to Spanish speakers. By keeping this focus, Voxy has established great presence in the market and has over 3 million users and $15 million in funding.
The first we thing we have to keep in mind is that it takes much more than a good idea for a startup to thrive.
