Intro to Startup Anti-Pattern Series

An anti-pattern is a commonly used process, structure, or pattern of action that looks like a sensible response to a problem but produces more bad consequences than good ones. Simeon Simeonov first wrote about the value of startup anti-patterns in 2013; this post revives that framing as the launch of a series co-authored with Itamar Novick of Recursive Ventures, drawing on their combined experience across 100+ startups and their portfolio founders.

The core claim is that studying repeatable patterns of startup failure is more useful than studying non-repeatable strategies for success: it's hard to pin down why startups succeed, but experienced operators have a reliable sense of what kills them. Anti-patterns aren't fatal on their own — no single one guarantees a company dies — but they stack, each one clouding focus and hampering execution.

The post closes with a work-in-progress list of roughly seventy named anti-patterns: Elephant hunting, Platform risk, If you build it they will come, Bad revenue, Chasing Blue Oceans, Analysis paralysis, Founder arrogance, Boiling the ocean, Design by committee, Confirmation bias, Premature optimization, Premature scaling, Death by pivot, Featuritis, Founderitis, Groupthink, Overengineering, Proof by anecdote, Unicorn hunting, Zombie, and many more. The authors note the list is "not drawn to scale" — some anti-patterns occur more often than others, and some are more likely to be fatal.