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A few years ago, startup culture arrived in full force: follow your dreams, work hard, find the money, build the best team, and turn your dreams into reality.

A good plan, right?

But from there, some things started to drift off the planned route. People began to leave their jobs to chase their dreams, and then things would start to go wrong: either they worked hard and found the money, but didn’t have the best team. Or they had the money and the team, but wanted an easier life. Or they were willing to work a lot and had amazing people, but couldn’t find anyone to invest in their ideas.

From that point on, startup culture stopped being so attractive. Technology still inspires many people to open their own innovation companies—which is a good thing—but that doesn’t mean those startups are succeeding. In fact, most startups shut down before turning the idea into a real product or service, or they end up on a carousel of raising investment but never managing to validate their minimum viable products (MVPs).

So what causes that?

It may sound obvious, but the trio of lack of willingness to commit, lack of a competent team, and lack of investment are major reasons. But there are others, such as…

…the lack of a business model

Having an innovative idea is great, but an idea has no value if it cannot be executed.

Now, having a business model is a whole different conversation. It means you not only have an idea, but you also know how it will be implemented: what problem it solves, for which audience, what it costs you to deliver the product or service, what its final price will be…

All of that helps you understand whether you have a solution to a real problem—or whether you are trying to invent a problem to see if someone will buy your solution. And believe it: the world already has enough problems for yours to be just another company trying to “cure” a pain that doesn’t exist.

In addition, a business model can prove to investors that your startup has market value—not only because of its brand, but also because of its ability to generate money.

Look, for example, at companies like Instagram and WhatsApp: they don’t generate profit and rely on huge investments to stay online. But millions of people use them, so for now, it’s fine.

If one of those companies starts losing users, the chance of losing investment and market relevance is enormous. You don’t want that: you want a business that generates profit and relevance for potential investors and, more importantly, for customers. Even because Instagram and WhatsApp are big exceptions to the rule—and, most likely, the only ones.

…fear of making decisions

There is a moment in every startup’s life when it needs to decide for its own survival, and that moment happens every day. If you are not willing to make decisions, your startup will probably fail on day three.

We are not talking only about choosing a color for the pitch design or when your next product test will be. That also matters, of course, but you need to understand when to hire someone or when to outsource a service, when to fire someone or when to simply stop working.

All of these decisions are important for anyone working with innovation, but one stands out: if you need to develop an app, for example, you cannot raise investment for anything other than developing the app. And if there aren’t good professionals in the market willing to buy your idea, it’s time to hire a software factory—without fear of looking like you’re making the wrong decision.

Because, in the startup reality, what’s truly wrong is avoiding decisions.

…not doing what must be done for the end customer

The point above leads to another equally serious one: when a startup doesn’t make decisions, nothing gets done. And a startup cannot simply live off “nothing”. You need to progress every day in the search for the product or service that will leave your customer satisfied.

More than investors, more than your other startup-founder friends, the person who has to see relevance in what you do is your end consumer. So do everything you need to do with the intention of making them happy with what you deliver. Anything less than that is poor work.

And then it will no longer be a case of not deserving the “startup” title: it will be a case where the title is no longer necessary, because the startup will cease to exist soon.

If you have seen these mistakes happening with other Brazilian startups, do everything you can not to repeat them. Creating an innovative idea is not the biggest challenge; surviving one more day in the mind—and in the gadgets—of someone willing to pay for what you thought of is.