What went wrong

I see an agency as a service business in the literal sense: we serve and we deliver. We have built that fairly deeply into Silberpuls. We want projects to succeed, not only because we want to make money (although, yes, that too), but because I believe people usually meet twice. I want you to be happy and come back because the work was good, not because a contract has tied you to us.

Even so, a significant number of the businesses and products we have worked with eventually failed. There is no single explanation. There are, however, recurring patterns. They are remarkably reliable.

Running out of money is rarely just a maths problem

Lack of money is an obvious reason. Many founders underestimate the cost of keeping a company alive. Our agency has almost no material costs, yet our monthly expenses run up to a six-figure sum. Would you have guessed that?

Building a product covers only the first part of the bill. It may be a website, a brand or a SaaS tool. Then operations begin. Technology needs maintenance. Content needs producing. Support requests arrive. Marketing costs money. The product has to keep moving. If your calculation ends at launch, you are planning a house-warming party for a building nobody can afford to run.

Two lines are missing especially often:

• Product development. Good digital products need a release storyline. What does V1 do? What follows in V1.1? What should V2 become? Users behave differently than expected, markets shift, and technical shortcuts return later with an invoice attached.

• Marketing. You thought you could simply launch and customers would arrive. Oops. Sadly not. Visibility, sales and trust do not appear because your product now has a URL.

This does not mean every company needs enormous reserves. It means scope, business model and financial runway must fit together. A smaller and clearer first release is often healthier than an impressive product that starves three months after launch.

This is where our product strategy and MVP design come in. We work with you to decide which problem the first release must solve and what can wait. Those decisions become prioritised journeys and a prototype that lets us test assumptions. “We would like everything” turns into something you can build, afford and keep developing after launch.

Your blind spot belongs in the budget

Founders tend to carry a useful collection of skills in their heads. Sometimes a co-founder supplies the missing ones. I founded Silberpuls without that complementary partner. It makes some things easier. It also leaves flaws in the company's original DNA.

I am good at putting myself in a client's position, both the founder and the end customer. I can anticipate what matters, see the wider picture and distinguish good design from bad.

I am terrible at maths. Not ideal for an entrepreneur. Tax is too complicated for me, thankfully my wife understands it. And other people at Silberpuls are better designers than I am.

Having a blind spot is normal. Mistaking it for complete vision is dangerous. Marketing specialists forget the technology. Product people forget marketing. Engineering teams perfect an architecture before anyone knows whether customers need the product. Design teams solve the wrong problem beautifully.

Missing expertise therefore belongs in the plan alongside time and money. If it is not available internally, it needs to come from outside. At Silberpuls, we bring in specialists in areas such as SEO, PR or technology when a project needs them. We may act as the architect, but an architect does not have to lay every brick.

The final boss is democracy without responsibility

The pattern we see most often is the belief that a company or project should operate as a democracy. A friendly group starts a business, and somehow everybody wants a vote on everything.

We know this problem ourselves. Our management team deliberately includes different voices. That is valuable. It still needs clear responsibilities and a sensible division of work. Otherwise, we are a flock of chickens rather than a group of decision-makers.

Inside a project, unclear responsibility creates predictable trouble:

• Founders want to decide everything together and end up making no decision. Or they settle on a compromise in which everyone keeps their favourite feature. The product loses its focus.

• A committee spends weeks discussing taste even though everyone knows the real decision-maker will appear later and send part of the work back to the beginning.

• Decisions sit untouched because nobody wants to own the risk. The timeline slips, and time has the irritating habit of turning into money.

At Silberpuls, we often say that we are usually not the bottleneck. That is not a criticism of clients. A logo, a brand or the logic of a product can involve serious decisions. Of course you may need to sleep on them. The project still needs to know who decides the next morning.

In a branding project, asking “What identity do we want to communicate?” is more useful than voting on favourite colours. We turn that answer into visual identity and language. With UX/UI web design, we take it further: what information does a visitor need first, what should they understand and what should they do next? Those questions support a decision. “I prefer blue” rarely does.

What to settle before the project starts

If you have read this far, please contact us. You have earned an ice cream. You may also have noticed that avoiding every mistake at once is not terribly complicated.

At Silberpuls, projects therefore begin with a kick-off. We try to finish it within two or three hours, while everybody's brain is still working. Three questions matter most.

Name one final decision-maker

In projects with companies such as SIXT, decision-making authority often follows established roles. Founder teams can be harder because everybody is a co-founder. Even then, one person needs the final call. This does not mean only one person may think or speak. It means the discussion can end.

Identify the blind spot

After working on many projects, we tend to see quickly where we or the client are missing something. That outside perspective does not replace specialist knowledge. It helps find the missing discipline before it becomes expensive. A UX audit can be useful for precisely that reason: not to produce an attractive list of problems, but to decide which problems threaten the launch.

Be honest about the budget

We all know the feeling. Instagram shows you your dream car or dream partner. They do not always fit your budget, and the story tends to end badly.

We create clarity early about what the available money can buy. That is not the same as talking a project down. We may remove features together, move parts to a later release, or say openly that an expectation in design or technology does not match the budget. It is less exciting than a grand promise. It is far more useful.

Implementation belongs in that calculation from the start. In our web development work, we choose the platform to suit the project. How complex are the journeys? Who will update the content? Which integrations are needed? A suitable CMS and a proper handover are not optional extras for later. They help determine whether you can operate the website yourself after launch.

So nothing can go wrong now

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

Experience is not insurance against failure. It does help you recognise trouble earlier. Our team has seen more than 900 projects. We recognise patterns that still look like surprising exceptions from inside a single project.

We cannot guarantee that your company will succeed. Claiming otherwise would be dishonest. We can help ensure that the product, website, shop or brand has a realistic scope, a clear focus and the right people around the table. Things may still go wrong. They are simply less likely to go wrong for reasons we have already seen fifty times.