Startup Companies: Life Cycle and Challenges

Startup companies are newly born businesses that fight for life. Most of these entities are formed on the basis of brilliant ideas, and grow to succeed. Such phenomena are described in the theories of management, organization, and entrepreneurship literature. There is however no clear picture of these individuals. This paper attempts to conceptualize the phenomenon, i.e. "startup" and acknowledge the challenges they may face. The paper concludes with some concluding remarks after reviewing the lifecycle and challenges. The first gap deals with the environmental and socio-political factors that affect the adoption of KM in startups. The second gap concerns the lack of a comprehensive Knowledge Management System (KMS) taxonomy that may support knowledge creation, acquisition, storage, transfer, sharing, and application processes. This second gap helps us to define a third gap about the degree of consistency between the approaches implemented by the company and the technologies. Finally, the fourth gap deals with the issue of the impact of KM on startup’s performances with regard to economic, financial, market, technical, organizational, human and relational performance.