The Titanic Effect: Successfully Navigating the Uncertainties that Sink Most Startups

“I have read dozens of books on starting companies, but this is the first that accurately captures why startups fail and provides a tool for entrepreneurs and investors to measure and manage these sources of failure.” Michael Hatfield, Co-Founder, Cerent, Calix, Cienna, and Carium.

What makes a startup successful?
This book, from award-winning business school professors and a tech serial entrepreneur, tells what makes startups successful. Instead of telling startups what to do, like most startup books, they share what startups should avoid. Along the way, they share small business startup success stories gleaned from the How Built This Podcast and their firsthand experiences. These stories of startup success are contrasted with stories of startup failure from startup graveyards and most notably, the Titanic. Like many of today’s startups, the Titanic hoped to disrupt the transportation industry of its time. It fell short, to a disastrous outcome, from the same sources that prevent startup success today.

Get a startup game plan!
This startup book uses the Titanic and a sailing metaphor to provide a startup roadmap template. It shows what makes startups successfully navigate through challenges in startup investing, founding, and hiring with a game plan to get through the Human Ocean. It offers a startup guide to customer success in working through the Marketing Ocean. It even highlights what startups need to invest in to get through the Technical and Strategy Oceans. Its Iceberg Index gives entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses a way to track their progress on the startup roadmap template. It also helps investors assess what startups to invest in.

Many entrepreneurs assume that the Titanic was sunk by a single iceberg. The Titanic Effect shows, that like many startups, it’s not a single misstep but a series of mistakes that keep a startup from being successful. This combination of missteps is called the Titanic Effect.

Who can benefit from this startup roadmap?

Entrepreneurs in the early stages of building a startup. They will learn what makes a startup successful. They will develop a to-do list of decisions to make and actions to take.

Small business owners will also identify key next steps to building their startup game plan.

Investors can identify what to avoid in startup investments and what startups to invest in.

Students will learn how to evaluate the success potential of a startup and will read small business and startup success stories.

These three co-authors have witnessed firsthand what leads to startup success. They have made it their mission to help entrepreneurs, startup founders and startup investors succeed. Drs. Todd and M. Kim Saxton bring more than two decades of academic and professional experience in business strategy, entrepreneurship, marketing, and angel investing. Serial tech entrepreneur, Michael Cloran, adds his two decades’ of experiences in launching his own startups as well as building software products for other startups. In addition, the co-authors serve on various boards of entrepreneurial ventures and startup advisory associations. They have shared their expertise from the stage to dozens of audiences, including students, entrepreneurship and professional development associations, academic societies, and global companies like Roche Diagnostics and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Todd Saxton, Associate Professor and Indiana Venture Faculty Fellow at the IU Kelley School of Business, is an award-winning professor of strategy and entrepreneurship. Todd has advised, helped launch, invested in, and served on the board of multiple startups. He has published numerous book chapters and articles on corporate and startup strategies for success. Todd hails from New Jersey and has lived in Virginia, the DC area, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Bloomington IN, currently residing in Indianapolis, IN.

Dr. Kim Saxton has over 30 years of marketing and market research experience, working with large corporations, startups and medium-sized businesses. Currently, she teaches marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Her research on market segmentation, branding, and venture ecosystems has received national recognition. Kim is also an active angel investor and advisor to high-potential startups. Kim grew up in Florida, went to school in Boston, and has lived in the DC area, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. She currently resides in Indianapolis, IN.

Michael Cloran is a serial entrepreneur who has raised tens of millions of dollars for ventures he has co-founded. He is a founding partner of DeveloperTown, a software design and development firm that helps both startups and larger firms manage technical debt. Michael was born in Kentucky and has lived in Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, and Yugoslavia. He currently resides in Indianapolis, IN.