Success and Failure Factors, Challenges and Lesson Learned of IT Startups: Empirical Study

Numerous Information Technology (IT) startups succeeded in running their businesses. Regardless, some of them failed. There are various reasons behind the success and failure of IT startups. This study has extracted the main success and failure factors, as well as, the challenges of running IT startups from both the academic and industry perspectives. The main success factors can be summarized as clear vision, team collaboration, and understanding of customer’s needs. Further, the main factors that cause IT startups to fail are a lack of understanding the market, a lack of technical background, and financial issues. Whereas most challenges faced by startups, while running their businesses are team member conflict, partner support, and the complexity of applying business bootstrap techniques.