Supposedly 99%+ of all startups of any kind (products, restaurants, etc) fail within a few years of launching. Fail = shut down.<p>Even most YC startups fail, despite of all the support.<p>This is problematic because it discourages founders on the margin from launching a startup.<p>More so in a downturn after a period of exuberance in the tech and crypto markets.<p>Increasing founder success rate at every stage of the startup journey-- idea, build, launch, grow, pmf--would have the double impact of more successful startups encouraging more new founders.<p>Seems to me we need a way for founders to reward the world for helping them grow at every stage-- incentivizing early believers, collaborators, adopters, growth hackers, etc-- the way YC is incentivized to help their founders-- because they share in the upside.<p>These don't have to be securities, or even onchain assets, rather they can start as closed-loop reward coins that can be evolved to confer ownership and/or be onchain.<p>To see an example of how this might work, please check out https://www.producthunt.com/posts/freemance.
Michael Siebel has some great video discussing this exact topic. One thing he reiterates often is how most of these startups take too long to ship an MVP. They spend months, years in a vacuum burning cash and building something they think is needed, without ever actually testing their assumptions.<p>I notice this happens when teams lack someone with product management skills. It’s not enough to be a great engineer or a Steve Jobs level marketer. You need someone who tests assumptions in the field with real users and maps out what the market really wants.