It is no secret that starting a business is a difficult thing. Some startups succeed but the vast majority fail. In a study conducted by Statistic Brain, it was found that after five years of launching, 50% of all U.S. companies fail. After ten years the failure rate skyrockets to 70%. Because of these high statistics, it’s important to understand what the challenges are facing your company. I’m going to look at a few of the most difficult things so far in starting our business, Māhlon Acoustics. We are very early in our startup adventure, but here are a few of the challenges that have already presented themselves.

I tend to look at timelines quite optimistically. However, I’m realizing that I continually underestimate how much time projects take to accomplish. Especially being in college and having a busy schedule, it is sometimes difficult to even complete small tasks on time. Because of this difficulty, I’m learning to be more intentional about goal setting, carving out specific times to work on Māhlon Acoustics projects. It’s been important for me to take an honest assessment of the time I have available and to realistically understand how much time I have to work on Māhlon Acoustics in a given week.

Another thing that has been difficult is all the legal things that need to be taken into account. From business structure to liability concerns, taxes, patent provisions and much more. Unfortunately starting a business is not as simple as making a good product and selling it. There are so many legal issues to take into consideration and paper work to go through in order to reach the point where you’re ready to sell products.

These are just a few of the issues that we’ve faced and I’m sure there will be many more. However, part of the excitement of starting a business is not knowing what the next problem will be. We will continue to move ahead one step at a time and are excited to begin selling our products in the coming weeks.