100 Ways a One-Person Business Dies

Formulas#

• Avoid ruin first. Never take a bet with a real chance of total loss, whatever the upside. (Nassim Taleb)
• Runway = cash ÷ monthly burn. Keep 6–12 months, and know the date it runs out.
• Concentration rule: if one channel, customer or platform brings more than 50% of revenue, it's a single point of failure.
• Risk priority = probability × damage. Guard against high-damage risks even when they're unlikely.
• Inversion: "What would kill this?" is easier to answer than "What would make it succeed?" (Charlie Munger)

Money (1–16)#

1. Running out of cash. Keep a runway of 6+ months and know the date.
2. Costs growing faster than revenue. Let spending follow revenue, not hope.
3. One customer bringing in more than 25% of revenue. Spread revenue across customers before you depend on one.
4. Lifetime deals. They bring cash once and support costs forever. Avoid them or cap them.
5. Prices too low to pay for support. Price for the support load you'll actually have.
6. A tax surprise. Set aside a fixed percent of every payout.
7. Fraud or chargeback spikes that freeze your payment account. Use fraud tools and have a backup processor ready.
8. A payment provider holding your funds. Withdraw often and keep a second provider set up.
9. Currency swings. Price in a stable currency and keep a buffer.
10. Personal and business money mixed together. Keep separate accounts and pay yourself a fixed salary.
11. Debt taken on for growth that never comes. Borrow only against revenue that already exists.
12. Paid ads where a customer costs more than they're worth. Know both numbers before you scale spending.
13. A wave of refunds after a bad release. Roll out in stages and keep a rollback plan.
14. Tool subscriptions piling up. Review costs every quarter.
15. Ignoring churn until growth stalls. Track churn monthly from day one.
16. No personal emergency fund, so business cash gets drained. Keep personal savings separate.

Platforms and channels (17–32)#

17. A platform bans your account. Follow its rules strictly and keep off-platform backups of everything.
18. A marketplace changes its fees or ranking. Build an owned channel alongside it.
19. An algorithm update wipes out your traffic. Don't let one source bring most of your visitors.
20. A critical API shuts down or raises its price. Prefer stable, paid APIs and have an exit plan.
21. An app store rejects an update. Know the review rules and keep a web version.
22. One channel brings most of your customers. Build a second channel before the first one fades.
23. The platform builds your feature itself. Build on the gaps its business model won't close.
24. A suspended social account takes your audience with it. Move followers to email.
25. Email deliverability collapses. Authenticate your domain, clean the list and never buy lists.
26. Losing your domain to expiry or hijacking. Turn on auto-renew, registrar lock and two-factor login.
27. An AI model provider changes its price or behavior. Keep the model swappable and test it regularly.
28. AI answers replace search clicks. Be the source AI cites, and build direct channels.
29. The partner who sends most of your leads walks away. Spread partnerships and turn referrals into your own list.
30. Terms of service change against you. Read the updates and keep your business portable.
31. Your host has an outage and you have no backup. Keep off-site backups and a documented rebuild.
32. Payment restrictions in a key country. Use a merchant of record and more than one payment method.

Product and market (33–50)#

33. Building something nobody asked for. Validate before you build.
34. The market shrinks. Choose a growing market and watch the trend each year.
35. A funded competitor copies you and undercuts you. Compete where their model can't follow.
36. The leader makes it free. Serve the segment the free version ignores.
37. The platform solves the problem natively. Move to the next unsolved layer.
38. AI turns your product into a commodity feature. Sell the outcome, the workflow and the trust, not the raw capability.
39. Feature bloat buries you in support. Delete features every quarter.
40. Quality slips and reviews turn. Protect the core job before anything new.
41. A security breach. Cover the basics, collect minimal data and have a response plan.
42. Data loss with no working backup. Test your restores.
43. Serving everyone and fitting no one. One product, one job, one customer.
44. Chasing a new trend every quarter. Commit to one bet for a fixed period.
45. Abandoning your core customers for a shiny new segment. Stage gates: the next segment comes only after the current one works.
46. The tech stack goes stale. Upgrade steadily, not all at once.
47. A big outage at the worst time. Monitor, alert and practice recovery.
48. A name or trademark conflict. Search trademarks before you launch.
49. Breaking a privacy law. Collect less and publish clear policies.
50. Missing a regulation deadline. Track the rules that apply to your niche.

Customers and reputation (51–62)#

51. Handling a public complaint badly. Respond fast, own the mistake and fix it in public.
52. Dark patterns come to light. Never use them.
53. Breaking promises such as surprise price hikes or removed features. Grandfather loyal customers.
54. Slow support becomes your reputation. Set a response time you can keep.
55. Toxic customers eat your time. Refund them and let them go.
56. Lots of free users, very few paying. Put limits where the value is.
57. Your customer segment goes out of business. Serve segments with healthy economics.
58. Fake reviews get discovered. Never use them.
59. Spammy outreach gets your domain blacklisted. Send fewer, personal messages.
60. Affiliates misrepresent you. Set clear rules and remove offenders.
61. The founder loses touch with customers. Talk to some every week.
62. A big customer turns you into their agency. Say no to one-off custom work.

The founder (63–82)#

63. Burnout. Protect sleep and time off, and make rest non-negotiable.
64. Illness with no backup. Keep documented processes and emergency access for someone you trust.
65. Boredom makes you quit a working business. Choose a market you'd enjoy for 10 years.
66. Chasing shiny objects. Keep an idea parking lot and review it only on a schedule.
67. Isolation. Join a peer group of founders.
68. Perfectionism, so nothing ships. Ship weekly, even if it's small.
69. Fear of selling. Treat selling as helping and practice it daily.
70. Ego that ignores data. Keep a decision journal and review it.
71. Sunk cost that keeps a dead project alive. Set kill criteria before you start.
72. Quitting before things compound. Set a minimum commitment period.
73. Strain on the family. Share the plan and the runway with them.
74. Comparing yourself to funded startups. Play your own game.
75. Months of busywork. Do a weekly review against revenue-moving work.
76. Repeating the same mistake. Write a short post-mortem after each failure.
77. Too many products at once. Run one main bet and a few small ones.
78. A skill gap you never fill, often marketing. Learn it or buy it.
79. Only you have the passwords. Keep an emergency access plan.
80. Tying your identity to the business. You are not your revenue.
81. Hustle culture wrecking your sleep and your decisions. Hold to a fixed stop time.
82. A life event with nothing on autopilot. Automate enough that the business survives a month without you.

Operations (83–92)#

83. One server, one card, one person: single points of failure. Duplicate the critical ones.
84. Backups nobody has ever restored. Restore one every quarter.
85. Processes that live only in your head. Write procedures.
86. A contractor with too much access. Give minimal access and remove it when the work ends.
87. An account taken over without two-factor login. Turn it on everywhere.
88. A critical vendor goes under. Know your alternatives.
89. A surprise infrastructure bill. Set spending caps and alerts.
90. A support backlog that spirals. Fix the top causes and pause new features if needed.
91. Personal assets exposed to business risk. Use a proper legal entity.
92. No contracts with contractors, so you don't own the IP. Put IP assignment in every contract.

The pre-mortem routine (93–100)#

93. Once a year, imagine the business has died and write down why. (Gary Klein)
94. Rank each cause by probability × damage.
95. Fix the top 3 this quarter.
96. Keep a one-page risk register and review it quarterly.
97. Test your recovery: restore a backup and log in from a fresh device.
98. Spread out only the fatal risks. Focus still wins everywhere else.
99. Barbell: a safe cash cow plus small risky bets, and nothing reckless in between. (Taleb)
100. Never risk what you need for what you merely want.