March 08, 2025 • By KWD
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Did you ever wonder why so many startups fail to sustain after launching? Or why so many tech companies fail to expand? Or why there are so many e-commerce apps, where as handful of apps which address social challenges.
Recently Eric Schmidt, Co-founder and Ex-CEO of Google, gave a lecture at Center for Entrepreneurs and he listed three big failures of tech firms.
People stick to what they are familiar with
"Far too often, we invest mostly in people we already know, who are working in very narrow disciplines," Schmidt said during the lecture.
Diversity is a tricky thing in tech companies. Usually the tech firms are dominated with males and specifically from around one region. This imbalance in diversity also poses limitations in not just only services/products/platforms (SPP), but also poses a limited outlook for the company.
And it's not just people. The tech firms seem to stick to what they know and rarely emphasize on exploring newer technologies, unless when they are asked for. This limits the solutions offered as well as the quality of the SPP.
Too much focus on commercial returns than on social platforms/solutions
"We frequently don't build the best technology platforms to tackle big social challenges, because often there is no immediate promise of commercial return," Schmidt mentioned in his draft.
There are a ton of e-commerce apps but not enough speciality platforms for safely sharing and analyzing data on housing problems, environmental changes or the traffic problem, which plagues Kuwait.
There is a need for socially conscious tech firms which can take advantage of the immense innovation coming out of network platforms, which allow people to connect and pool data, because there is a huge scope for startup success in these areas.
Early partnering isn't happening
Startups and early tech firms aren't partnering soon enough. The energy is usually high and the motivation zooming during the early days and when partnered during those times, it multiplies and condenses into something useful.
We cannot expect companies with four people to drive innovation into sectors which need massive inputs and deliver solutions with drive.
Schmidt says, "The market for homecare robots is going to be very, very large. The problem is that you need visual systems, and machine learning systems, and listening systems, and motor systems, and so forth. You're not going to be able to do it with three people."
It is critical that tech companies look into other disciplines to partner with, like arts, business, history, humanities and environment apart from STEM disciplines to create socially responsible and relevant solutions and platforms.
