Tom Eisenmann is the Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School; Peter O. Crisp Chair of Harvard Innovation Labs; and faculty co-chair of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, the Harvard MS/MBA Program, and the Harvard College Technology Innovation Fellows Program. In this conversation with Stanford professor Tom Byers, he shares insights from his book “Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success” (Currency, March 2021), which analyzes common patterns that sink both early- and late-stage startups, and also proposes a road map for deciding when to pull the plug and how to fail better.

Tom Eisenmann (Harvard Business School) - Why Startups Fail

Welcome to Episode 72 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast from the leading authority for jobs & careers in the tech industry.

For this episode of our podcast, I interviewed Tom Eisenmann, Professor at Harvard Business School.

What do the companies Rent the Runway, Birchbox, ThredUp, Cloudflare, Evertrue, and InsightSquared all have in common? Well, they are all companies that you may have heard of… but did you know that they all participated in Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition? It’s true and this is a small sampling of the amazing companies from this competition.

Sure, careers in management consulting and investment banking are still commonly considered by b-school grads, but its the path of entrepreneurship that has been one of the fastest growing areas of interest for students. 

Thus, I was excited to interview Tom and get an inside look at entrepreneurship at HBS. Tom has over 20 years of experience as a faculty member and he is also the faculty Co-Chair of the HBS Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, which supports these students who are looking to transform their ideas into successful startups and even perhaps… change the world. 

In this episode of our podcast, we also cover lots of great topics like:

-ABC’s Shark Tank and how so many HBS affiliated companies have appeared on the show.
-Tom’s background and what led him down the path of academia.
-How HBS has evolved over time as it relates to entrepreneurship and its curriculum, including their case method approach.
-The common mistakes where entrepreneurs get tripped up.
-Tom’s thoughts on whether or not entrepreneurship is a trait someone is born with or is it something that can be taught.
-Advice on how to get into Harvard Business School.
-Plus, a lot more.

Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!

Episode 72: Tom Eisenmann - Professor at Harvard Business School

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. &ldquo;Whether you&rsquo;re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment,&#160;Why Startups Fail&#160;is essential reading.&rdquo;&mdash;Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and&#160;New York Times&#160;bestselling author of&#160;The Lean Startup&#160;and&#160;The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught&#160;Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn&rsquo;t answer&#160;it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. &bull;&#160;Bad Bedfellows.&#160;Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder&rsquo;s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. &bull;&#160;False Starts.&#160;In following the oft-cited advice to &ldquo;fail fast&rdquo; and to &ldquo;launch before you&rsquo;re ready,&rdquo; founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. &bull;&#160;False Promises.&#160;Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. &bull;&#160;Speed Traps.&#160;Despite the pressure to &ldquo;get big fast,&rdquo; hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. &bull;&#160;Help Wanted.&#160;Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. &bull;&#160;Cascading Miracles.&#160;Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise&mdash;from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles&mdash;Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Why Startups Fail by Tom Eisenmann, read by Robert Fass

The team at Stanford eCorner believes in the powerful combination of evidence and imagination. We share original stories from informed leaders in academia and industry that focus on innovation, startups, culture, and strategy. The goal: empower you to bring bold ideas to life. 

Stanford eCorner is led by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center in Stanford University’s School of Engineering.

The VentureFizz Podcast is the flagship podcast of VentureFizz.com, the leading authority for jobs & careers in tech. In this podcast, VentureFizz Founder Keith Cline interviews the top founders and investors in the tech industry.

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