I stumbled across this infographic earlier. The original article is here which I'll use to refer to some points a bit more in detail.

Showing the top reasons startups fail, I find it quite interesting to reflect it onto Steemit inc. as well as our own project, SteemSTEM and indeed any others. Take a look and see what you think:

Steemit.com

1 - No market need

I'm not sure about this. On the surface, it seems there is a market need. But at the same time, there's very little interest in general and a lot of skepticism. By and large, the view of Steemit from the rest of the world that hears about it is scam, ponzi, disaster, 70% layoffs and so on. The only good thing you hear which is also untrue, is 'easy money'.

So although I do think there's a potential want for steemit, there's not necessarily a need. The problem that Steemit is trying to solve is one that most people aren't really concerned about. Steem has of course many potential applications, but we're talking Steemit, which is limited to the market of 'uncensored but kind of censored content where you can earn 1 cent for 6 hours' work and not be recognized or noticed for your contribution'.

You can also argue steemit inc. itself has some SMT thing or whatever but... nah.

2 - Ran out of cash

Lol

3 - Not the right team.

I'm just gonna keep quiet on this one...

This brings me back to the underlying problem I didn’t have a partner to balance me out and provide sanity checks for business and technology decisions made

A diverse team with different skill sets was often cited as being critical to the success of a company.

I don't know about the inner workings of Steemit inc. But the outside perspective of the team is seemingly not all so positive.

4 - Get outcompeted

This hasn't happened yet, but with things moving forward so incredibly slowly without taking into account major considerations from the public, this is a high-risk scenario. Right now, Steemit is exceptionally lucky that there is not much out there taking its place, because in today's current Steemit climate, this would otherwise have been the sudden death of the company as we all migrated to the alternative.

There are already alternatives. We may complain and call them scams or whatever, too, but everybody says that aboutt Steemit also. There's Narratiive, Whaleshares, Yoyow, Sphere, and a whole host popping up almost daily. Some disappear just as quickly as they arrive, some are still kicking about, built on other blockchains or the same.

But the more this happens in the time Steemit focusses on sinking its own ship, the higher chance one comes along that works. And when one works, there's no coming back from 7 cents Steem.

5 - Pricing/cost issue

Again this is something most of us are probably already concerning about, so moving on...

6 - User un-friendly product.

Multi-week sign up process. 'nuff said.

But I'll say more. This feature alone is enough to destroy the entire blockchain. But that's not the only issue. The website itself functions, but the search is abysmal, the organization of posts is chaotic, the Trending is famously a disaster which is the first - and last - thing 99.9% of people see when visiting, and the whole concept of needing to scroll infinitely back in time through hundreds or thousands of posts to find the good stuff from years ago, is absurd.

Add all this to the insanely steep learning curve which goes against the whole mantra of appealing to the layman, and you have yourself a very unfriendly product indeed.

7 - Product without a business model.

Well... I guess they had one. It broke. I know very little of this stuff myself but it seems they focussed a lot more on scalability and functionality in ways that nobody can actually perceive without taking into consideration that neither of those things will matter if your business collapses.

8 - Poor marketing

Ned is not the man you want appearing on Bloomberg. There's little choice here given he's the CEO, and I'm not dissing him for it, but some people have a personality and a way with words that bring people in, and Ned is not one of them. Neither am I. In his position I would be 20x the disaster, but Andrarchy would be preferred to me, or any representative. Even @berniesanders would be pretty great face of Steemit, if you really think about it.

To add to this, there seems to be, well... no marketing whatsoever. None that i've ever seen. That's not a sign of good marketing. Steemit has for too long allowed a dominant flow of negative press, presumably under the guise of 'freedom of speech', without actually making any defense for themselves. Even if this wasn't the case, the fact that most users can't even get an account makes marketing irrelevant.

9 - Ignore customers

We spent way too much time building it for ourselves and not getting feedback from prospects — it’s easy to get tunnel vision. I’d recommend not going more than two or three months from the initial start to getting in the hands of prospects that are truly objective.

We didn’t spend enough time talking with customers and were rolling out features that I thought were great, but we didn’t gather enough input from clients. We didn’t realize it until it was too late. It’s easy to get tricked into thinking your thing is cool. You have to pay attention to your customers and adapt to their needs.

Need I say more?

From 10-20 I'll just cruise through more briefly the ones that I think apply.

11 - Lose focus

Ned himself has admitted that the team has taken on far too much at once, the burden resulting in, well, disaster.

I'm not sure what they have been telling investors if any, but it seems like there is a loss of direction other than blindly chanting 'SMT...SMT...SMT'. Perhaps this new found focus is a good thing, but there are still a lot of loose ends and un-done promises.

12 - Disharmony among team

Well, I'd more say among the team and the people, the witnesses. That's a complex issue, though.

13 - Pivot gone bad

Well if by pivot we mean 'hardfork' in this case then... yeah.

Pivoting for pivoting’s sake is worthless. It should be a calculated affair, where changes to the business model are made, hypotheses are tested, and results are measured. Otherwise, you can’t learn anything

So there you have it.

Not only could Steemit fail due to the Number One most common reason startups fail, but they check the boxes of almost every single one of the top 20. One could argue, if they wanted, that either 0 or all 20 apply, but it's a safe statement to say, Steemit.com is not exactly thriving.

So, what about SteemSTEM?

Well, we're not exactly a business or startup or whatever so much as just a group built atop one. But as we grow to become our own independent entity, one that has functioned consistently despite lack of any finance and little to no support for over 2 years... i'm interested in ripping us apart with the same top 20, see where we stand compared.

I'll leave that for a second post, though.