Success. Success. Failure. Success. Failure.

That’s it, that’s my story. It’s been my heartbeat. I’m a Serial Entrepreneur with a 60% track record, which is comforting, except that I’m coming off my latest failure at Helpstream. 60% is way in excess of what most any VC ever gets….

I am fond of saying you learn a lot more from failure than success. Call it a consolation prize, but I do learn a lot from the failures, though I also learn from the successes. Since I am just off a Failure, clearly I have not yet amassed enough learnings to have a perfect picture of how to navigate the treacherous waters a startup sails on to success. Hence there are new learnings to be discussed. The Helpstream Learnings Series

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It happens all the time. I’m meeting with an entrepreneur, who is telling me about a really innovative product idea for a consumer website. And I’m liking it. We’re going back and forth on product ideas. And before I know it, we’re approaching the end of our meeting. I then ask them, “So, how are you going to acquire customers.” And that’s when it happens…The most disappointing answer is when they say “Oh, we’ll just make it viral.” As if….

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In February 2010 Fred Wilson, a New York based tech investor, spoke at the annual Future of Web Apps Miami conference. His talk, clocking in at just under 30 minutes, looks at his top 10 principles for creating a successful web app. A full transcript is available in the original post.

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This post comes from reading some blog entries like the post our friend Abe Sultan of Apprenda wrote for Datamation – How to Fail Miserably as a SaaS Company and my own conversations with software company executives. Before anybody says it – it is not every way there is to fail at SaaS. And like any limited list covering a big subject – the items are over broad and not necessarily indicative of the most common ways to fail.

But that said, these are the things that really irritate me and I’m sure irritate those who have lived these errors – as happens in the life of an entrepreneur. So, if you are or are considering offering a product with the SaaS business and delivery model, you might want to consider about the common trip points mentioned in this article…

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Steve Blank is a respected voice in Silicon Valley for good reason. He writes and speaks from a deep well of experience and insight. I’ve never found anyone who could put the current trend towards the “consumerization” of online software into an actionable context better.

What I’ve linked to for this “classic blog post” is actually not one post but instead a whole category of Steve’s posts that highlight an approach to product development that is strongly user-driven and fits particularly well for the Internet delivery model of SaaS products. It is a key part of the whole “Lean Start Up” philosophy that is gaining a lot of attention because it answers the questions around what is a viable roadmap for a SaaS product.

If you’re developing or considering a SaaS product, I strongly suggest sampling the posts in this series – there is a lot of good information here.

[Recommended by By Michael Dunham at http://blog.sciodev.com ]

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