06/20/2025

Most startups don’t fail because of bad products. They fail because their market was imaginary.

Because the founders weren’t solving a problem, but they were doing therapy for their egos.

Startup death isn’t dramatic.
It’s slow, quiet, and full of small compromises.
Like that second ICP you added “just to test.”

This sounds a little dramatic, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this.

Partially because I’m surrounded by one of the most founder-dense networks in Europe. At WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, we have fewer than 10,000 alumni, and yet 15 unicorns, more than 10% of all VC raised in Germany over the last decade, and the most startups per Euro in university budget in Europe...

It’s not magic. It’s focus.

Over the past weeks, I’ve been working on a simple 3-circle test to avoid fake markets and help founders prioritize focus in those very early days:

One real pain
One shared channel
One feature set

If one’s missing, you’ll burn time, money, and morale chasing people who were never your people.

In the beginning...
eBay nailed 1 collector group: Pez dispensers.
Zalando sold 1 kind of shoe: Flip-Flops.
Stripe served 1 founder cohort: other Y Combinator ventures.

That wasn't thinking too small. That was focus.
And that’s how monopolies start.

I turned it into a carousel you can share with early-stage founders.

Know someone getting started (especially non-WHU founders and students)? Tag them.
Got your own story of narrowing down? We’d love to hear it.
Want to test your niche? Try the 3-circle check.

Let’s stop building for imaginary markets.

Ein persönlicher Beitrag von Max Eckel, Leiter des WHU Entrepreneurship Centers. Die hier geäußerten Gedanken spiegeln seine individuelle Perspektive wider.