From Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: non·start·er

noun

Date: 1902

1 : one that does not start

2 : someone or something that is not productive or effective

I have been thinking of this word for sometime.  I see two different types of startups that are nonstarters on an almost daily basis.

The first is a team of technical co-founders that do not know how to sell or market.  They are not comfortable with it.  They have built something.  No one is using it.  They just need $250,000 to hire a sales guy or a marketing girl or they want to outsource to an agency. But they don't understand or want to understand customer acquisition.  They just need the $250k for SaM.

The second is the business guy or girl with an idea. A vision. Might be a good one but they have no skills to create a product out of their vision. Not only do they not have technical skills, they have never been involved in building a product.  They don't have any technical types in their networks and they are looking for some stranger to join their company as a co-founder and work for sweat equity.  Or they need $250,000 – $1.2 million to build the product.

These are both scenarios that do not start.  How to be more effective.

The tech team needs to invest the time to understand their potential customer buying motivations and putting together a prototype customer acquisition machine so they can gain some traction, revenue, and proof that they have a product that solves a real problem.

The business types either need to belly up to the bar with some personal credit card debt or use their personal network to make their way to a person that is willing and able to build a product prototype.  They will have proof they can actually make what they have been talking about and be able to get some customer feedback on the product direction.

If you can't build both a product and and a method to acquire customers there is no chance, no hope, for success.