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Early-Stage Software Startups: Main Challenges and Possible Answers

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Abstract

Software startups have a low probability of success. In their early-stage days, they face several challenges from different types that make it even harder to progress to the following stages. Some papers in the scientific literature focused on understanding these challenges. Meanwhile, others proposed solutions to these problems. In this chapter, we present a literature review of the challenges and patterns displayed in the scientific literature. Challenges are divided into four categories: related to product, market, finance, and team. The patterns presented in this chapter are (1) Get help from the methodologies, (2) Acquire customers, (3) Hack money incomes and outcomes, (4) Use available and simple tools, (5) Go up to the cloud, (6) Find your mentors, (7) Long-term purpose instead of money, and (8) Networking. We also show how the presented patterns could be used to tackle the identified challenges.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Jorge Melegati

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Fabio Kon

Authors
  1. Jorge Melegati
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  2. Fabio Kon
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jorge Melegati .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business and IT, University of Southeast Norway, Bø i Telemark, Norway

    Anh Nguyen-Duc

  2. Center for Entrepreneurship, Reutlingen University, Reutlingen, Germany

    Jürgen Münch

  3. School of Technology, PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Brazil

    Rafael Prikladnicki

  4. Facoltà di Scienze e Tecnologie Informatiche, La Libera Università di Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Xiaofeng Wang

  5. Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Pekka Abrahamsson

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Melegati, J., Kon, F. (2020). Early-Stage Software Startups: Main Challenges and Possible Answers. In: Nguyen-Duc, A., Münch, J., Prikladnicki, R., Wang, X., Abrahamsson, P. (eds) Fundamentals of Software Startups. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35983-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35983-6_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-35982-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-35983-6

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