The Top 7 Biggest Obstacles Faced By Startup Founders In 2019

Each year the worlds most well-known startup accelerator puts on a free program called Startup School. Y-Combinator, or YC to most, is like the Ivy Leagues of startup accelerators. This is the accelerator where companies like AirBnB, Dropbox, Doordash and Instacart were founded. To say that they know what they’re doing when it comes to new startup ventures would be the understatement of the century.

As the year comes to a close, so does YC’s Spring cohort. The prize money ($15k equity-free) has been assigned and the numbers have been tallied. In typical startup fashion, Y-Combinator released a slide presentation they call “Start Up School By The Numbers” which is a deep dive into the various statistics that go into launching a startup like:

-how many characters should your description be (ideally 40)

-how many words you should use in your elevator pitch (on average, 78)

-average weeks until ready for launch (estimates started at 7 and increased over time…)

The part of the presentation that fascinated me the most was the break down of the top 7 challenges startup founders…