Why Start-Ups Fail is for general audiences — people who are thinking to start a business, or people who are already running one. It is not a research study. That's what a professor at Harvard Business School would do: take two hundred companies, analyze the causes, and so on. This book is different. It is based on experience, and it's my advice based on that experience. The people who have read it — whether on the venture investing side, the angel investing side, or people who have had companies — say, "There's a lot of wisdom in here. You should pay attention to it." There will also be people who say, "No, I disagree with that." That's fine. You don't write books for everyone to agree with everything.

I'm American originally. I've lived in London since 1988. I have a PhD in chemistry. For the first part of my career I was an academic scientist at various universities in New York — teaching, publishing papers, directing PhD students and undergraduates, and so on. Then friends from Standard Oil of Ohio asked me to come and manage a portion of their research center. I had never worked in industry for a day in my life, but I thought it could be fun. I gave up academic tenure, and it turned out that it suited me very well.

SOHIO was bought by BP, who asked me to come to the UK. I worked for BP for many years, in roles spanning research, refining and marketing technology, and the refining business itself. I led BP's efforts on environmental issues, climate change, and clean fuels. In my last role I was chief scientist — the first person to hold that title at BP, which was a great job. Since leaving, I've done a mixture of venture capital, company boards, and government work both in the U.S. and the UK.

Then I got this hobby of writing books — this is my fourth. My first, Crash Course, came out in 2015 and is about leadership. Then Solving Chemistry, a history of chemistry in the twentieth century with a personal viewpoint. In 2024, The Material Advantage, which explores why there are rich countries and poor countries. And now Why Startups Fail.

I also believe that you learn things from your experiences in everyday life. When I was living in New York, I was a juror on a murder trial. We often talk about how in business we have diverse teams. A jury is a really diverse team. You have people from completely different backgrounds and different ways of living their lives — and you all have to come together and make a decision that is literally life or death for someone else. How you bring those people together is very difficult, and very instructive.

There is a temptation to think that what startups need most is a sense of wonder — the ability to wander in the mind, to think about things other people thought were impossible. But I think it's actually the opposite problem that brings most of them down. Startups fail more often because of lack of focus. Too much wandering. Generally, you need to focus. You need to know when something requires you to pivot or change direction. But mostly you need to say: this is what we're doing, and we're going to really concentrate on getting it done.

The thing I want people to see right away is that failure of startups is not inevitable. There are a lot of things you can do to avoid failure, if you're willing to learn lessons from where others have gone wrong. This is really a positive book. Yes, business is insanely difficult — there are so many things that can go wrong. But you can avoid some of them. And I talk about how to get on a positive path to success.

Ongoing thread. More from Bernie Bulkin to follow.

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