What are the factors that can kill your startup?

1. A single Founder...meaning a "team" of one.

2. A CTO without superb engineering skill.

3. A niche product with too small of a market.

4. Not enough capital.

5. Launching too early.

6. A muddled, poorly thought through, Go To Market strategy.

7. Hiring programmers that are marginal to save capital.

8. Jumping into a saturated market without significant product differentiation. The classic examples are outsourcing and web design.

Do your research! What is the reality of the competitive landscape and is it possible to significantly differentiate your product as superior?

9. Deciding against outside investment because you're afraid of stock dilution. It's one hell of an uphill battle to try to scale effectively leveraging current revenue.

10. Picking the wrong geographic location for your firm.

There's a valid reason why there are a limited number of global startup hubs. Even NYC, with all of it's attendant glamour, has less than 20% of the successful startups of Silicon Valley.

Go where the experts are. If you're in the middle of nowhere, it's going to be extremely difficult to attract the talent you need to survive and prosper.

(n b., This is, by no means, an inclusive list! I could easily come up with 20 more.)