90% of Startups Fail—Here's How I Made Sure I Was in the 10% Here's my story, and how I ensured the success of my company, which has become the number one-rated digital marketing agency in Australia.

Launching a startup is a losing effort. At least, that's if you follow the numbers. The statistics vary, but by most accounts, the failure rate ranges from 70% to 90%. That means that as many as 9 in 10 startups will eventually shutter. That's a sobering reality, if anything.

So what drives a person to take this leap? Is it passion? Optimism? Intuition? Ambition?

Everyone starts a business for their own reasons. For me, it was out of a desire to create something of my own. I navigated some very challenging times, clawing myself up from the bottom.

Here's my story, and how I ensured the success of my company which has become the number one-rated digital marketing agency in Australia.

However, when we started, we were a couple of young chaps putting on our suits and going door to door on Sydney's high streets. Here's our story, and how we made it.

Find your company's raison d'être

Everybody is fueled by something, an objective or goal that drives them in life—their raison d'être. Before you start a company, you need to find your company's raison d'être—its reason for existence. Whether that's helping market effectively in the digital era, revolutionising how we communicate, or making education accessible to more people, your company's raison d'être is the north star that guides every decision.

Ask yourself:
● What problem are we focused on solving?
● Why does it matter?
● And who suffers if we don't solve it?

It all started with my co-founder, Mez Homayunfard, and me working 9-5 jobs in 2012. I was working at a marketing agency, and everywhere I looked, digital marketing was showing immense potential.

But working office jobs, doing junior tasks, we were never going to make it.

So, as most startup stories go, we quit our jobs. We realized there was a massive opportunity in the market, as many retailers were not fully clued in to the potential of digital marketing. So, we put on our suits and went door to door, from retailer to retailer, asking businesses, "Do you know what digital marketing is, and what it can do for you?"

As a newly founded company, our mission—our raison d'être—was clear: to educate first and foremost, and to grow companies' sales funnels through the power and reach of digital marketing.

Remember that most successful companies are ones with a purpose that they never lose sight of: Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and the like.

With enough effort, we hoped we could land a few clients to get us started.

Solve a real problem for your clients

As expected with any cold-call style effort, rejection is the standard. We spoke with many managers, all suited up with papers in our hands, looking all professional. Many had no idea what we were talking about, others were familiar but didn't have the budget for it, while others outright rejected our ideas. It was a rough time out there, but after hours of trying, questioning whether we had made the right choice leaving our jobs to offer something no one seemed to want, we managed to land a single lead.

This prospect wanted to better connect with potential customers and was struggling to grow their reach. They realised the online market would be the gateway to this new source of business. At that moment, it all clicked: we had just witnessed the validation of our business model. That interaction also hit us with an epiphany: our first lead was built on a simple principle: solve a real problem for your client.

When approaching other businesses, the lesson we had learned was that we needed to stress the problems they are facing, and how our company would offer the solution. A basic marketing principle, mind you, but one that can be easy to forget. After all, how many founders go into business because they're passionate about creating a product that ultimately nobody wants or needs? This remains the top reason why so many startups fail. With this new lesson in mind, we pushed on, and our efforts started bearing fruit. One lead grew into two, then three, and so, Online Marketing Gurus came to be.

Delegate where you can, and be smart about it

Once we landed those first clients, it didn't get easier. In fact, it got harder. We were no longer trying to prove the concept—we had achieved that, which is an accomplishment in and of itself, no doubt. But now, we had to deliver. And not just once. We had to do it over and over again, consistently, at scale.

Getting clients is one skill. Keeping them is another. And scaling delivery while maintaining results is no easy feat. Suddenly, we weren't just founders—we were account managers, strategists, HR, Finance, Operations. We were everything, everywhere, all at once. At that point, we learned that to keep the ship afloat, we needed to prioritize and delegate. As the minds of the operation, we needed to focus on the big picture—everything else could be handed over to someone else.

However, it was also important that we hire skilled and talented individuals who would shore up our weaknesses and skill gaps, as many startups fail because they hire the wrong people. Your team members in those early days are the core pillars on which your business is built. Hire smart, and hire right.

A successful organisation is built on effective processes

With the right people in place, we needed to scale effectively. That's when we were hit with a stark truth: growth doesn't just expose opportunity—it exposes every weakness in your system. And if we wanted to survive it, we needed to do two things:
1. Systemize what worked, and
2. Ruthlessly eliminate what didn't.

We started building internal processes—documenting campaigns, tracking results, building templates, and investing in tools. It wasn't glamourous, but it was essential. And that shift—from scrappy startup to system-driven business—was the foundation that let us scale without burning out or breaking down, something that many startups fail to do in their early years.

Become part of the 10%

Ultimately, these are the key lessons that we learned, which helped us to build a successful business that lasts. You don't have to be the smartest. You don't need the perfect plan. But if you're willing to bet on yourself, solve real problems, build systems that scale, and surround yourself with people smarter than you, then you just might earn your place in the 10%.