Analysis of 2,715 Startup Failures Reveals Hidden Cause: Buyer-Precision Failure in Market Strategy

Hey RevGeniuses, we mostly live in GTM, so this one's aimed at you. I went through 2,715 documented startup deaths (~$660B in disclosed funding) and re-classified them by the commercial question that actually went unanswered, not the post-mortem label the founder wrote. The finding RevOps people will recognise instantly: of all 2,715, only one names "we didn't know who we were actually selling to" as cause of death - not because it's rare, but because nobody writes that on the headstone. It gets absorbed into "no market need" and "bad marketing/distribution" instead. Buyer-precision failure is the silent graveyard, hiding in everyone else's columns. Exploratory. Here- https://ssrn.com/abstract=6882278. If you'd rather skip the PDF, comment or DM and I'll send the executive summary - the charts, six named patterns, and a six-question pre-build diagnostic. Happy to send to everyone who wants it.