Managing Existential Startup Risks

How to manage existential startup risk

Insight from SaaStr and Keith Rabois

If you are building a startup, you have core business risks.

There are usually 2-5 core problems to conquer.

When reviewing the core problems to cover, try this:

• Take a whiteboard and plot the critical risks in order of degree of difficulty

• Calculate the skillset that gives you an unfair advantage in solving that risk

• Go hire or internally assign a DRI (directly responsible individual) to each risk

Revisit the prioritization in a year. Your problems may have shifted.

An example of this was when Keith Rabois built OpenDoor.

His core risks were pricing homes using data, needing real estate knowledge, and building a top-tier product.

Keith hired a world-class data scientist and a CEO with real estate and product-building experience to combat this.

The earlier you map people against the most critical challenges, the more likely you will succeed.