Top 10 Reasons Why Web Startups Fail

Source: GetHelp

#10 Marginal Niche
Web Startups fail by choosing a small, obscure niche in the hope of avoiding competition. If you make anything good, you’re going to have competitors, so you may as well face that. You can only avoid competition by avoiding good ideas.

#9 Copying Success
Web Startups fail by trying to duplicate a great idea. If it’s been done once then chances are others have tried, and failed. There can only be one amazon.com or ebay.com. Come up with your own unique and fresh concept.

#8 Inflexibility
Your business plan should be an organic document that can adapt to change. Web Startups fail because they refuse to deviate from the plan. Listen to others, get advice and keep your eyes open; adaptation is the mark of a successful business.

#7 Getting the Wrong Help
Good people demand good wages. Hiring the cheapest person is a recipe for Web Startup failure. Old sayings become old because they are true, the best example being “you get what you pay for”.

#6 Listening to an Un-Expert
Web Startups fail by acting on advice given by an unqualified person. Anyone can claim to be an expert at something and often we lack the knowledge necessary to determine their qualifications. To protect yourself from the Un-Expert get a second, third or fourth opinion. It never fails to ask around.

#5 Forgetting the User
Web startups fail because the websites are designed from the perspective of the business owner, not the user. In an entrepreneur’s excitement and passion for their idea, they can often lose sight of their customer’s accessibility needs. Focus groups and user trials can be a great way to improve customer interaction with your website.

#4 Running out of Runway
Web Startups fail by forgetting or downplaying funding. Every startup that isn’t profitable has a certain amount of time left before the money runs out and they have to stop. This is sometimes referred to as runway, as in “How much runway do you have left?” It’s a good metaphor because it reminds you that when the money runs out you’re going to be airborne or dead.

#3 Spending Too Much
Often caused by listening to the Un-Expert, Web Startups fail because they over spend needlessly. Unless your doing volume of business equal to chapters.ca you do not need a dedicated co-located IBM Xeon server when a $20.00 hosting account will suffice.

#2 Believing the Hype
The web is all about Hype; from get rich quick schemes to seemingly endless unsolicited emails claiming to have insider information. The reality is that the people who get rich quick from the internet put a lot of thought and energy into their projects, just like anything else. The internet is a great medium for scammers

#1 A Half-Hearted Effort
The failed startups you hear most about are the spectacular flameouts. Those are actually the elite of failures. The most common type is not the one that makes spectacular mistakes, but the one that doesn’t do much of anything—the one we never even hear about, because it was some project a couple guys started on the side while working on their day jobs, but which never got anywhere and was gradually abandoned. In other words, starting startups is just like everything else. The biggest mistake you can make is not to try hard enough.

What's New in Windows Vista SP1

Source: Microsoft

Security

• Provides security software vendors a more secure way to communicate with Windows Security Center.
• Includes application programming interfaces (APIs) by which third-party security and malicious software detection applications can work with kernel patch protection on x64 versions of Windows Vista. These APIs help ISVs develop software that extends the functionality of the Windows kernel on x64 computers without disabling or weakening the protection offered by kernel patch protection.
• Improves the security of running RemoteApp programs and desktops by allowing Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) files to be signed. Customers can differentiate user experiences based on publisher identity.
• Adds an Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC) pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) to the list of available PRNGs in Windows Vista.
• Enhances BitLocker Drive Encryption (BDE) to offer an additional multifactor authentication method that combines a key protected by the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) with a Startup key stored on a USB storage device and a user-generated personal identification number (PIN).

Reliability

• Improved reliability and compatibility of Windows Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Improved Windows Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Windows Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Performance

• Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
• Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
• Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
• Improves performance of Windows® Internet Explorer® 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.
• Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain computers.
• Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
• Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

Administration Experience

• BitLocker Drive Encryption encrypts extra local volumes. For example, instead of encrypting only drive C, customers can also encrypt drive D, E, and so on.
• Addresses problems with printing to local printers from a Windows® Terminal Services session.
• The Network Diagnostics tool will help customers solve the most common file sharing problems, in addition to the basic problems that it already diagnoses.
• Administrators can control the volumes on which to run Disk Defragmenter.

NOTE: SP1 will remove the Group Policy Management Console.

Emerging Hardware and Standards

• In the future, flash memory storage and consumer devices will use the exFAT file system. Windows Vista SP1 adds support for this file system to Windows Vista.
• The service pack will include support for Secure Digital (SD) Advanced Direct Memory Access (DMA), which will be on compliant SD host controllers soon, to improve transfer performance and decrease CPU utilization.
• x64 PCs can boot using the EFI. Windows Vista currently supports network boot by using Windows Deployment Services for x86, a PC's basic input/output system (BIOS) for x64 PCs, and EFI for IA-64 PCs. Windows Vista SP1 will add support for network boot by using x64 EFI.
• The service pack will add support for Direct3D 10.1, adding application programming interfaces (APIs) and features that enable 3-D applications, so game developers can better take advantage of a new generation of Direct3D graphics hardware.
• The Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) is a remote access tunneling protocol that will be part of the Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) platform. This protocol helps provide full-network virtual private network (VPN) remote access connections without challenges that other protocols face when traversing NATs, Web proxies, and firewalls. Windows Vista SP1 will include support for SSTP.