Most companies die of something somebody already knew.
Startups usually fail on ordinary problems that other founders have already solved. Getting you to those people, before the problem becomes fatal, is the whole job.
Why startups fail is not a mystery.
of new U.S. businesses fail within their first year.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024are gone by year five. Survival is a coin flip.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024of venture-backed shutdowns trace back to the wrong product for the market.
CB Insights, 2026Running out of capital is the final event, not the cause. Everything underneath it is a judgement call somebody else has already made badly and learned from.
One variable bends the curve, and it is a person.
Hold the market, the capital and the idea steady. Change who the founder has around them, and the numbers move.
succeed when the founder has already built one company, against 18% first time out.
Gompers et al., JFE 2010 · venture-backedmore money raised by founders with mentors, metrics and peer learning.
Startup Genome · 3,200 tech startupsbetter user growth for the same founders, against those without.
Startup Genome · 3,200 tech startupsSame markets, same investors, same capital. Two-thirds better odds, bought with nothing except having done it before.
The study measures founders who combined helpful mentors with tracking their metrics and learning from experienced operators. Mentorship is what makes the other two usable.
So we build the room.
MPower is a founder community in Texas. We put founders in the same room as the operators who have already solved what they are stuck on, and we publish their stories so the right people find them.
Rooms
Founder Sessions in Dallas and Austin. Coffee, a fireside conversation with a founder about what actually worked, and a room of people building at every stage.
Records
We put founders on the record in writing. Bytes are short reads on one company. Deep Dives are long profiles of operators worth studying.
It starts in Texas.
Founder Sessions run in Dallas and Austin, and Chicago and Abu Dhabi are being built next. Each is a place where ambition is concentrated and access to the room is not.
The room is open.
If any of this reads like your situation, come to the next founder meetup in Dallas or Austin. It's free, it's open to anyone building, and you can turn up with an idea and nothing else.