It’s the number nobody likes to say out loud: nearly 90% of startups fail. Pitch decks, demo days, and funding announcements tell one story — but the reality is harsher. For every “unicorn,” dozens of companies quietly fold, often after burning through millions of investor dollars. VCs rarely highlight this statistic, but founders feel it every day. The truth is that failure isn’t usually about bad ideas or market size. It’s about operational execution. 

The Execution Gap

 Research shows the top causes of failure include (CB Insights, Harvard Business School): 

• 42%: No market need
• 29%: Ran out of cash
• 23%: Wrong team

 But look deeper, and you’ll see that most of these reasons stem from operational breakdowns: 

• Teams not aligned on priorities
• Quality systems failing under scale
• Fragile supply chains collapsing under volume pressure
• IT and data fragmentation stalling decisions
• Runway evaporating because spend outpaces readiness

 Startups don’t fail on vision. They fail on execution. 

Why This Matters for VCs

For investors, these failures are painful. Capital intended for scaling turns into capital wasted on fixing preventable mistakes. Every missed yield target, every late supplier, every costly recall — it all shortens runway and drags down valuation. And yet, traditional due diligence often overlooks operational readiness. Market size, TAM/SAM/SOM, and founder charisma dominate. But if execution is the true killer, shouldn’t operational execution also be the core of due diligence prior to investing? 

The Hidden Stage: Process-Market Fit

 Product-market fit proves demand exists. But process-market fit determines if a company can actually deliver at scale. Without it, even brilliant ideas crash against the wall of operational reality. 

Closing Thought

 The dirty little secret isn’t that startups fail — it’s that most failures were preventable. Execution risk can be identified, measured, and mitigated early. At Ruppert Strategy Partners, we help founders and investors close the execution gap with an 8-point operational assessment. Because in the end, protecting capital and building durable companies isn’t about vision—it’s about discipline.