Most startups don’t die because they lacked funding. They don’t die because of bad code, poor vision, lack of a business plan, or the boogeyman of “not having product-market fit.” They die because no one noticed they were alive in the first place.
We romanticize startup failure as some noble rite of passage (cue the montage of ramen-fueled founders grinding in a garage), pitching to yawning VCs, and heroically folding with dignity when the burn rate outpaces the dream. But if we’re honest, most of these companies don’t fail heroically. They just never mattered. They failed and probably shouldn’t have but the advice they were given was crap. They never got traction, not because they weren’t good, but because no one cared.
Not even the market had a chance to reject them. They simply slipped quietly into the ether, un-clicked, un-shared, and un-remembered (confession: I have forgotten how many I’ve forgotten).
Here’s why.
Six brutally common, thoroughly preventable reasons most startups fail to get attention
1. Lack of Marketing Experience
Let’s start with the easiest diagnosis: no one knows you exist because you don’t know how to make people care. Worse, you think this means advertising or promoting it (you’re wrong).
Founders often treat marketing like an afterthought; something you do after the product is perfect, something “the intern will handle,” or because “we’ll hire a growth hacker later.” You wouldn’t build a product without knowing how to code (or hiring someone who does). So why the hell would you launch a company without knowing how to generate awareness and demand?
You need to “talk to customers,” (so we’re told, to validate the idea) and yet you don’t even know how to reach them well enough to do so.
Marketing isn’t just ads or tweets or cold emails. It’s narrative design. It’s market segmentation. It’s funnel architecture. It’s SEO (well, now optimization for AI), PR, positioning, branding, audience psychology, and a healthy amount of channel experimentation. It’s making the market exist, not waiting for it to find you.
What you should do about it: Hire or partner with someone who knows marketing like you know your tech stack. One of your cofounders should have this experience. Not a TikTok intern. Not a branding agency that will waste $20k on a mood board. Find a marketer who has scaled a product before. Get them in early, during product design, not after launch.
Why it matters: Because the graveyard is littered with better products that lost to louder ones. Being the best is irrelevant if you’re invisible. Failing because of this is just stupid when all the research shows this matters most.
2. Poor Content Creation
Even if you get the marketing strategy right, you still need content. Because in the attention economy, content is your storefront, your salesman, and your publicist. It’s your way of signaling to the world, “We’re not just building something, we know what we’re doing.”
Startups that don’t invest in high-quality content are like restaurants without windows. No one’s coming in. No one trusts what they can’t see. And no, a half-assed blog post written by ChatGPT with zero voice or insight isn’t content. That’s digital litter.
Content is how you build trust at scale. It’s your chance to educate, entertain, provoke, and seduce. Thought leadership, documentation, tutorials, memes, case studies, comparison posts; if your content doesn’t hit people where it hurts or helps, it won’t land.
What you should do about it: Build a content engine. Not a calendar. Not a checklist. An engine, people, process, and channels aligned to produce and distribute original, valuable work consistently. Repurpose across platforms, optimize for SEO, and write like a human.
Among my favorite advice? If you are in an incubator, accelerator, or you have a marketer on your team, and THEY suck at doing this on their own behalf… why the hell are you working with them??
Why it matters: Because every VC, customer, employee, and journalist Googles you before they talk to you. If what they find is weak, or worse, nonexistent, you’ve already lost their attention before you even had it.
3. Thinking You’re Special or Unique
This one’s going to hurt, so read slowly: You are not special. Your idea is not new. And the market doesn’t owe you attention because you’re “different.”
One of the most delusional startup instincts is assuming that being “unique” is a value proposition. It’s not. If your pitch hinges on novelty, on being “the first” or “the only,” you’re missing the point. The market doesn’t reward originality. It rewards clarity, value, and execution.
The truth is that customers rarely want new. They want better. They want faster. They want cheaper. They want less annoying. That’s why entire unicorns exist just doing what other companies do, with better UX or pricing (see: Zoom, Notion, Slack, etc.). I just publicly skewered a pretty cool startup because their MVP requires a demo and sales call to talk about pricing – don’t be annoying!
What you should do about it: Kill your obsession with being special. Focus on being relevant, understandable, and superior in a very specific, tangible way. Use competitor comparisons. Name your enemies. Draw battle lines. Show people why you’re better, not different.
Why it matters: Because if your pitch is abstract, you’re forcing the market to do mental gymnastics just to understand what you do. They won’t. You’ll be ignored. Not because they hate you, but because they don’t get you (and they don’t care).
4. Being Too Early or Too Late to the Market
Timing is the hidden killer. It’s not about whether your product is good. It’s whether the world is ready for it, or already past it.
Too early, and you’re an expensive curiosity. Too late, and you’re an irrelevant copycat. Founders often misread the signals. They think that because no one else is doing it, they’re onto something big (there is ALWAYS someone else doing it). Maybe others tried and died. Maybe the infrastructure wasn’t there. Maybe the customer pain wasn’t sharp enough.
On the other hand, jumping on a trend already defined by category leaders, “It’s Uber but for dogs!” means you’re entering a knife fight with legacy players who already have brand equity and resources. That’s not disruption. That’s suicide.
What you should do about it: Study market cycles. Read analyst reports, trend forecasts, and tech adoption curves. Run searches for your startup idea in Google Trends. Interview potential users not just about need, but urgency. Ask what else they’re paying for to solve the problem now.
Don’t know how to do this? That’s okay, I got you, see #1
Why it matters: Because no amount of attention can compensate for building the right thing at the wrong time. You’ll either confuse people or bore them. Both are fatal.
5. Regulatory Issues That Prevent People from Bothering to Care
You could be solving a real problem in a regulated industry (healthcare, fintech, energy, transportation) and still get crickets. Not because no one wants what you offer, but because they can’t use it, promote it, or even talk about it without risk.
Think about it: if your product is walking the line of HIPAA, GDPR, SEC rules, or FDA requirements, then congratulations, you’ve just scared away everyone who doesn’t want legal exposure. Including customers, partners, journalists, and investors.
They won’t say “we don’t believe in you.” They’ll say nothing at all. Silence is the polite version of “we’re not risking it.”
What you should do about it: Bring in legal and compliance advisors early. Hire public affairs. Don’t hide behind “we’re just a platform.” That’s how Theranos got away with it. Be transparent about the regulatory path, even if it’s hard. Show that you know the rules and are playing by them or changing them through policy work and lobbying. Better yet, lead the conversation: own the narrative about safety and legality.
Why it matters: Because attention is not just earned through bold ideas, it’s earned through credibility. Without it, you’re radioactive.
6. Poor Business Development and Weak Connections with Partners and Competitors
Finally, let’s talk about business development, the lost art of actually building relationships.
If you think business development means sending LinkedIn messages or going to founder mixers, you’re doing it wrong. BD is about stitching yourself into the ecosystem. It’s about strategic alliances, co-marketing partnerships, integrations, distribution deals, and, yes, even engaging with your competitors.
Smart startups don’t just chase users. They chase leverage. That means partnering with the platforms, associations, and communities that already have the audience you need.
And don’t ignore competitors. Engage with them. Compliment them publicly. Even partner where it makes sense. No one cares about your existence if you’re not showing up where they already pay attention.
What you should do about it: Map your market. Identify the gatekeepers, the influencers, the incumbents, and the associations. Reach out. Offer value. Share data. Co-host events. Get on podcasts. Write guest posts. Partner on webinars. Do the work to build distribution channels that aren’t just paid ads or begging for press.
Why it matters: Because attention follows distribution. And distribution doesn’t come from hope. It comes from relationships.
Startups Fail in Obscurity
Startups fail in silence more than they fail in public. No dramatic crash. No scandal. Just… fading out of memory. A whisper instead of a roar. And it’s not because they didn’t raise enough. Or because they didn’t work hard. It’s because they never captured enough attention. They didn’t prioritize it.
If you’re not getting customers, not getting capital, not getting talent, it’s probably not your pricing, your pitch deck, or your “user onboarding.” It’s that no one gives a shit.
Fix that first. Or get used to being a ghost.
absolutely agree on the importance of understanding the foundations of marketing!
Setting up a lovely lemonade stand in an empty forest never struck me as good approach
seems like common sense
re: They never got traction, not because they weren’t good, but because no one cared.
I want to restate this just a bit, only because I think the tweak carries home your point better:
“They never got traction, not because they weren’t good; but because they didn’t start from a place of no one cares; and because they failed to change those hearts & minds.**
That is, the shortcoming isn’t market (i.e., not caring), it’s the startups’ fault for failing to change that.
** You get the idea. I’m sure it can be shortened and tightened.
Mark Simchock you’re right. I can only beat the drum that marketing means figuring this out, for so long… if founders (and investors) want to keep ignoring us, let them all die off.
I always love your articles. Thank you.
This post. Also the spooky ending. Great.
Too many founders seem to believe “If I build it, they will come.” And, that couldn’t be more wrong.
Somewhere near your #1 / Marketing, I was hoping for a nod or blatant mention to earned media coverage, as it is not the same as marketing, but plays in the sandbox with it well.
But again, great post. Agree, agree.
Carson Quinn saving the follow up for Halloween
“Earned” (paid and owned) is a concept lost on almost every founder and most investors. I feel you, you’re right, but doing marketing would earn a startup media.
Ehem John Rush thinks your product should he so good that it goes viral sans Marketing
John Rush is sort of right and also wrong, as you are, marketing is the work of determining what that product should be. Why does everyone think marketing means promoting or selling it??
Let me ask you, both, how do you know what product COULD be “so good” without studying the market of customers, competitors, and trends? Which is “marketing.” It would seem your proposition is that the CTO or product just magically manifests itself as what the market wants —- and yet, 90% of all startups fail, and most founders similarly agree that marketing is what you do after you’re ready to sell it.
I agree, but where do you find a marketing-minded cofounder? It used to be hard to find the right CTO, but that’s now the easy part with all these lay offs. But I’ve yet to find a marketing expert that’s also an experienced cofounder
Adam Lupu see #1
No, I’m kidding.
But I’m sort of not. Too many founders focus early on fundraising or customer adoption, so their pitch, their positioning, and their promotion is all oriented to a) we need capital to hire everyone or b) we need customers so we don’t need capital, or so we can justify capital (because they’re ignorantly saying we need customers to get funding).
Where is the messaging instead that no, in fact, we’re doing all of this stuff (the ecosystem, the overcoming regulation, the competitive advantage (better), and even content, and we need the CMO (type).
Anyone can do all that, and it also shows that you’re oriented to the market timing issue – not now… Not yet… because we don’t have *this expertise* on the team “and it would be dumb for us to launch without it.”
Just like that point about the CTO struggle… Why a struggle? Because tech felt undervalued, that the existing team couldn’t compete or scale, or they couldn’t get the money. Right? Loosely.
Well good marketers make the same assessment.
“We built this amazing thing and are trying to get funding but aren’t growing, so we need customers,” is only appealing to marketers if you pay them – because you’re clearly going to fail
Paul O’Brien I think we’re saying the same thing aren’t we? One of the CoFounders needs to be the Marketing leader with expertise and experience… but do those people exist? They can get paid bank by big tech so they don’t bother doing the hard work of founding a startup…
Adam Lupu yep, we’re saying the same thing.
Though, my experience is not that marketers won’t, it’s that founders aren’t creating the opportunity and alleviating the right risks, from the marketers’ point of view.
It’s not that they don’t bother doing the hard work of founding a startup, it’s that they understandably won’t join a startup they can tell is going to fail. And that isn’t evident in the idea, solution, market, etc., it’s evident in what the other founders say, prioritize, and have worked out.
By and large now, I can spot a startup that will fail in the first 3 slides of a pitch deck. It’s not easy to pick winners, but it’s easy to know what won’t.
Paul O’Brien yes that makes sense. Do you offer training for Founders on finding/recruiting a Marketing Co-Founder. It’s more important now than ever, as youve proven in your writings over the last several years.
Adam Lupu not anymore. I just can’t put the time into coaching one or even lecturing to a dozen, when my content reaches hundreds of thousands. I’m not the first to preach it, research it, or explain it… I’d like to figure out how to make it worthwhile to teach founders, but they shouldn’t be paying for common sense, and too many idiotic investors and consultants continue asserting we’re wrong making it difficult to bother.
Excellent post Paul O’Brien. Really excellent. Love your point about allies. As a startup it’s about getting noticed positively among the masses – and you don’t achieve this by screaming louder in the noise.
Regarding “Never got noticed” and “Plug into the Ecosystem”, the SSIA Research 2025 found that 65% of Industry Analysts say Startup engagement is important and 21% even critical to their work. Given that a single analyst has 700-2000 interactions with potential tech buyers / strategic partners per year, that’s one way to get noticed for “ecosystem plugability” that startups should not miss – especially since briefings are free. Startups & Industry Analysts are natural allies. We will share all the 2025 SSIA findings next week.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/holscherc_b2btech-startups-scaleups-activity-7340264968149184513-1hLJ
A product that obeys every regulation but has no users is just a legal trophy. Get seen. Stay safe. You need both.
Amen! and even though everyone thinks they know how to do it … especially in the era of AI … you really do need an expert because marketing runs far and wide and not every piece of it is applicable at every stage of your company’s lifecycle. Preferably, find a marketer or agency partner who also understands business operations and what it’s like to scale a business. And I beg startups to not build marketing around their speeds and feeds before positioning around the audience pain points, motivations, and aspirations. (Of course, I’m absolutely biased.)
Great points. Chris Holscher, Duncan Chapple and I would argue that the attention economy around startups has become much more professionalised and systematised in recent years, especially through the role of industry analyst firms and analyst relations, both of which speak directly to all of your points about storytelling, timing, resonance etc
see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/joms.12805
You’ll like this: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/paul-obrien-awareness-crisis-killing-start-ups-sagecircle-afoqc/?published=t
Christine, be biased. You’re right.
Seriously, thanks for sharing, and I do think you’re right. Marketing is the work of figuring out that moat, that go to market plan, the audience, etc. all the stuff founders claim to be doing, but aren’t (well) because they dismiss marketing. Founders should be bringing in this expertise first, before doing anything else… i.e. What’s the MVP?? The marketing determines that.
Paul O’Brien Champion! We need more people who understand (and appreciate) those points. Thank you!
I agree. I think startups need to hit the sweet spot of having “product solves/moves needle for problem”, “customer knows about company”, and “customer can access product”
I’d even offer; it’s more of a spectrum:
customer knows about company > customer can access product > product solves/moves needle for problem
Because while most founders think it’s the product/market fit that matters, the fact of the matter is that the point of “startup” (as opposed to new business) is that the problem and solutions are uncertain and evolving. Your work is as a startup is solving problems in a valuable and scalable way, by getting the feedback from the market.
Focus on the right side of that spectrum without the left, and you fail
Focus on the left side of that spectrum, without the right, and you’re merely building the demand for something to be determined by that demand.
Most focus on the right and fail.