Discovering Success Factors in the Pioneering Stage of a Digital Startup

Background and Purpose: Successful digital startups can generate income for the country and improve people’s lives. However, for prospective founders who will launch their startups, the success factor in pioneering digital startups remains unknown. The purpose of this study is to identify key success factors for digital startups in pioneering stages. Methodology: Thematic analysis is a method for identifying success factors in pioneering stage digital startups. The data will be collected from the interviews of ten startup founders. Results: The findings show that fifteen critical factors are success factors in the digital startup pioneering stage, namely; problems, business ideas, teams, business models, capital or funding, products, incubators, validation, competitors, marketing, mastery of technology, market analysis, founders and co-founders, partners, and passion. These findings are expected to be ground-breaking for anyone interested in launching a digital startup. Conclusion: The first conclusion that we can draw is that there are fifteen important factors that can be claimed and used as success factors in the classification of the digital startup pioneering stage. The second conclusion, based on the findings of the ten founders’ analyses, is that problem factors and team factors are two of the fifteen most dominant and influential digital startup success factors. Problem factor is critical for detecting problems encountered by many people and can motivate digital startup founders to develop solutions to these problems. While team factor is important because with a team, all problems raised are quickly and easily resolved, and all work is handled productively and collaboratively.