Modeling Start-Up Barriers and

SOUTH ASIAN JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT
Modeling Start-up Barriers and

Solutions Using Fuzzy Analytic
Hierarchy Process (AHP)
and Fuzzy TOPSIS†
Jitendra Gaur* and Kumkum Bharti**
A startup is a complex entity with several heterogeneous factors acting independently towards
its progress, resultantly the probability of a failure seldom surpasses success probability. Thus,
a preparedness towards dealing with weaknesses is equally important as working on the
success strategies. The aim of this research is to identify the barriers that inhibit the functioning
of a startup and as well as prioritize the solutions to overcome these barriers. A fuzzy AHP
technique is adopted to identify, categorize and prioritize the startup barriers. Whereas, fuzzy
TOPSIS is used to rank the solutions for startup barriers. Findings reveal four categories of
startup barriers, i.e., funding, government, operational and organizational with multiple
factors within each of these categories. The study proposes five solutions to counter 25 barriers
with a recommendation of priority to implement these five solutions by the entrepreneurs.
This is also one of the uniqueness of this study.
Key Words: Entrepreneurship, Fuzzy AHP, Fuzzy TOPSIS, Startup barriers,Startup solutions
INTRODUCTION
In the recession of 2007 people lost jobs but the American economy managed to
rebounced with the jobs creation by new startups. Globally, governments create a
startup ecosystem to increase the job opportunities and foreign investments. Weick
(1979) define a startup as “the act of assembling ongoing interdependent actions into
sensible sequences that generate sensible outcomes.” For the first generation
† An earlier version of this research paper was presented at the 6th PAN-IIM World Management Conference
2018 on the theme Start up to Scale up: Management and Policy Perspectives, which was organized by and held at
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) from 13-15 December 2018. The paper abstract is included
in the Conference Proceedings available at: https://6paniimwmc.in/6th-pan-iim-conference-proceeding.pdf
* Executive Fellow Program in Management (EFPM) Scholar, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur,
Kundeshwari, Udham Singh Nagar District, Kashipur 244713, Uttarakhand, India.
E-mail: jitendra.efpm1707@iimkashipur.ac.in
** Assistant Professor, Marketing Area, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, Kundeshwari, Udham Singh
Nagar District, Kashipur 244713, Uttarakhand, India. E-mail: kumkum.bharti@iimkashipur.ac.in
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MODELING START-UP BARRIERS AND SOLUTIONS USING FUZZY ANALYTIC
HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) AND FUZZY TOPSIS
entrepreneurs, the definition given by Weickmiss lucidity and generate ambiguity to

understand the meaning and application of a startup. A recent definition by Ries
(2011)define a startup as a human institution designed to create new products and
services under the conditions of extreme uncertainty. This definition is more concrete
and address a sense of uncertainty in the overall functioning of a startup. With the
development of Silicon Valley in Northern California (USA), the inception and growth
of tech startups took an escalating trend in the late 1990s and gave birth to some
successful organizations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix. This boom in
the startups also resulted in few noticeable failures such as My Space, Lycos and
Netscape that doomed quickly soon after inception (Complex, 2012). The success of
startups in the western countries quickly diffused to other countries, including India.
In April 2018, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India issued a
Gazette of India ‘StartupIndia’ (www.startupindia.gov.in)that define a startup as an
entity incorporated or registered in India, not exceedings even years, with an annual
turnover limiting to USD3.6 mn in any preceding financial year working towards
innovation, development, deployment or commercialization of new products, processes
or services driven by technology or intellectual property. Vesper (1990) raise concerns
over the survival of startups and mention survival possibility and growth opportunities
are one third that result in the failure at the early stages of inception. Bihari (2018)
mention high percentage of startups fail each year due to various reasons and more
research should be conducted to find out the reasons for startup failures.
The success to failure rate of startups is not impressive. Phillips and Kirchhoff
(1989) used the US Small Business Administration data andfound 39.8% of the new
firms survive for six or more years. In another study by Song, Podoynitsyna, Bij and
Halman (2008) through an empirical study on 11,259 new technology firms in the US
found 36% of businesses survive after four years of inception and the survival rate
further reduce to 21.9% after five years. The growth of successful startups has
significantly altered the innovation culture and economic condition of the country,
therefore, remained a thrust area for learning and investment by government and new
age entrepreneurs. The growth of Silicon Valley in the USA outpaced the startup
failure resulting in the establishment and promotion of startups in countries like Israel,
India, UK, and Australia. Van Gelderen, Thurik and Bosma (2005) in an empirical
study analyzed the reasons for startup success and failure. The success and popularity
of startups discussed above created a ripple effect on many economies, including India
to promote the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. The announcement of
the government policies such as Startup India, Mudra Yojana (policy), and Scaleup
India promoted entrepreneurship and innovation in the country to the extent that
best engineering and management students started to forgo campus placements and
left white-collar jobs to pursue startup ideas. The growth of startup in India from 1000
new tech startups in 2017 to 1200 new tech startups in 2018, as per the 15th edition of
Nasscom Product Conclave 2018 is a reflection of growing confidence among novice
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entrepreneurs to build the innovation culture in the country. However, it is difficult

to ignore the challenges that come along with this growth. Researchers studied 517
nascent and first-generation entrepreneurs for three years and concluded 195 startups
as successful, whereas 115 failed. This study triggered the need to investigate the
reasons which could be specific to technical, commercial, and others for startup
closures.
RATIONALE OF THIS STUDY

Over the years, academia has discussed factors leading to startups failure and probable
solutions, but separately (Triebel, Schikora, Graske and Sopper, 2018). The research
question (RQ1) for the current study isto investigate the barriers of and solutions for
the startups. In addition, this study attempts to prioritize the barriers of and solutions
for the startups. Thus, by the end of this research, we should be able to contribute to
the body of knowledge by:
1. Identifying the barriers of and solutions for startups; and
2. Prioritizing the barriers of and solutions for startups.
Moreover, the current study claims that no other previous research paper has
sysnthesized the prioritization of barriers and solutions for the starups in one single
study.
The theoretical implication of this research is that the use of AHP is quite new in
field of entrepreneurial research providing a way to rank the barriers. Secondly,
hierarchical clustering provides a new approach in entrepreneurial research to
categorize the barriers collectively. Thirdly, Fuzzy TOPSIS method is used to prioritize
the solutions for the identified barriers. Whereas, the practical implications is explained
in three points. Firstly, it will help entrepreneurs to identify the problem faced by
startups. Secondly, academia and practitioners will get a viewpoint on which barriers
are more significant to address and, five most imporatant solutions to mitigate the
effect of barriers faced by entrepreneurs. Thirdly, researchers and practitioners will
able to find which barriers need to be first addressed.
As per the author’s knowledge, previously researchers have not comprehensively
synthesized the barriers of and solutions for the impediments experienced by the startups.
The identification of five most workable solutions to mitigate the impediments were
also idenitified and assigned priority to address most critial problems faced by startups.
The impediments and solutions are comprehensive as it has been collectively synthesized
from the academic research articles as well as corraborated with the solutions proposed
by the practitioners. The combination of fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS method is
unique to this research for the analysis in the area of entrepreneurship.
We divided this paper into five sections. In the first section, introduction and
rationale of this study is discussed. Secondly, a brief overview of the literature review
is given followed by methodology used in this study. The next section covers the
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proposed classification and prioritization of startup barriers and solutions. Lastly,

discussions and implications are undertaken and a conclusion are drawn at the end.
LITERATURE REVIEW
A complex and a multidimensional nature of startups makes it as an exciting area of
study (Gartner, 1985; and Veciana, 1988). Almost three decades ago, researchers
such as Gartner (1985) and Veciana (1988) unidimensionally studied the reasons for
startup failures. But a change in the time period, ecosystem revamp, and an overall
shift in the mindset towards entrepreneurship in the last thirty years created a level of
excitement for a new researchers to address the barriers and solutions related to startups
from fresh lenses.
Weick (1979) define a startup as “the act of assembling ongoing interdependent
actions into sensible sequences that generate sensible outcomes.” For the first
generation entrepreneurs, this definition miss lucidity and generate ambiguity to
understand the meaning and application of startup. According to Ries (2011), “a
startup is a human institution designed to create new products and services under the
conditions of extreme uncertainties”. This definition is more concrete and mention a
sense of uncertainty in the overall functioning of a startup in a given ecosystem. Startup
failure is not industry-specific but span across industries. Chesbrough (2010) mention
efforts and investments as an essential prerequisite for a business model innovation
and a lack there of may result in startups’ failure. Using the Xerox’s example, Chesbrough
highlight a lack of innovativeness, poor understanding of market needs, workforce
reluctance to change, and technological obsolescence as the reasons for a startup
fallout. According to the NASSCOM Startup Ecosystem Report (2015), India ranked
third just behind the US and UK with more than 4200 startups. Formal germination of
a startup in India happened in 2007 when Flipkart registered as an online bookseller
platform. The practical world and academia continue to grow in terms of startup
research and growth. Cantamessa, Gatteschi, Perboli and Rosano (2018) analyzed the
failed startups and lessons learnt from them. These authors anayzed 214 startups to
find the startups failure patterns. Bednár and Tarišková (2017) identified the factors
leading to startup failure and highlight three out of five problems related with startup
failure are specific to finance, lack of proper testing of minimum viable product in the
actual market and, market sensibilities.
The academia viewpoint is scattered in terms of overcoming the startup failures.
Olugbola (2017) took a sample of 490 students and applied SEM and found
entrepreneurship training is central to all the factors for startup success. Kee and
Rahman (2018) studied the effect of gender on entrepreneurial orientation on startup
success. Whereas, Saberi and Hamdan (2019) identified the important role of
government support on entrepreneurship success and found that it carries a significant
moderating effects on entrepreneurship. Similarly, Ibeme (2020)used a sample of 353
startups and a found significant positive effects of admistrative leadership on
entrepreneurial development. Mikkonen (2018) studied the future management and
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leadership style as the necessary prerequisites to manage a startup from an organizational

point of view. From a qualitative study, he found that group working in team is needed
for the future and the key factors were self management and innovation. From the
selected literature review, we found that most of the research undertaken to identify
the barriers and reasons to overcome those barriers in the entrepreneurship studies
were scattered and, thus creating a need to synthesize the barriers and their solution
at one place. In addition, it is extremely important to prioritize the barriers and solutions
to find a starting point for execution (Raghuvanshi, Agrawal and Ghosh, 2017).
MOTIVATION OF THE STUDY
This study attempts to synthesize and rank the startup failure reasons as present
literature review suggested that reasons for startup failure existed in bits and pieces.
The authors of this study not merely wanted to provide academia and practitioner
community with the reasons of startup failure in synthesized format but also the solutions
to overcome these barriers and prioritize the solutions. Thus, to make the study more
relevant and appealing to the researchers and practitioners, the authors of this present
study wanted to include an expert opinion on the reasons to startup failure from both
practitioner and academic. Fuzzy AHP is found relevant to use in this study as it has
been previously used in tourism (Wang, Jung, Yeo and Chou, 2014; and Chen and Lee,
2011) operations management (Kumar and Garg, 2017; and Singh, Gunasekaran and
Kumar, 2018) and recently used in the entrepreneurship studies (Amrita, Garg, and
Singh, 2018; and Kazemi and Aliei, 2019). Whereas, Fuzzy TOPSIS is also used in
various domains such as operations (Singh, Gunasekaran and Kumar, 2018) and recently
used in research of entrepreneurship (Metvaee, 2019). Therfore, authors of this study
propose to use fuzzy AHP to rank barriers and fuzzy TOPSIS to rank the solutions in a
single study which is also one of the novelties of this research.
METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this paper is to identify the startup barriers, categorize them into some
homogeneous mutually exclusive categories and prioritize. Additionally, the proposed
solutions for the startup barriers were identified from the selected literature and
prioritized using Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS. This section explains the procedure
undertaken to identify the research papers, application of techniques and process of
expert opinion for using delphi technique.
SELECTION OF ARTICLES
The success stories and fall of startups are covered in the daily newspapers, magazines,
and forums much before such information is discussed or recorded in the academic.
Ho (2015) has studied the use of newspaper articles in academic research projects
and stated that it has pedagogical value to faculty and students and collectively it
holds high academic value in field of academic research specifically in social science.
The information published in neswpapers provides the latest trends of the startup
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industry in India. Therefore, for the identification of startup barriers, the top three
national dailies were selectedas a part of study data that include Times of India, Hindustan
Times, and The Hindu. These three newspapers were ranked as a top read English daily
newspapers in India (Statista, 2019). In terms of readership, Times of India has 4.76
million while Hindustan Times and The Hindu have combined readership of 4.23 million
as per Economic Times (ETbureau, 2018). Articles on the startups were selected from
these three sources for a period of August 1, 2016, to August 31, 2018. Two hundred
seven newspaper articles were identified, but 149 articles were studied in detail, and a
synopsis is prepared. The remaining 58 articles were rejected due to non-relevancy.
Authors found that startup barriers identified from the newspapers were also available in
various academic journals but in a scattered manner. These barriers were not synthesized
and no prior research was undertaken to measure the criticality of these barriers and
solutions proposed to counter them. Thus, as the next step the sysnthesis of barriers and
solutions for startups identified from newspaper were also selected from the literature.
All further steps were divided into the following three phases.
ANALYSIS
The research was conducted in three important phases as shown in Figure 2. The
detailed process followed is described as follows.
PHASE 1: IDENTIFICATION OF STARTUP BARRIERS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS
The newspaper articles of the three leading newspapers were selected and categorized
into four categories based on the framework drawn upon the study of MacMillian,
Zemann and Subbanarasimha (1987). Giardino et al. (2015) also used a similar
framework for classification in his research. Authors, renamed MacMillian’s four factors,
i.e., team (as organizational), product (as operational), finance (as funding), and
market (as governmental) according to the Indian context. Each startup barrier was
given a specific code and mentioned as a sub-criteria under four significant factors
derived from MacMillan’s work.
PHASE 2: FUZZY AHP
After the identification of startup barriers from the newspaper articles, these factors
were also searched in the academic literature. This step allowed to add an element of
prominence of these barriers in the startup success globally. As the next step, ten
experts from industry and academia having an experience in the entrepreneurship or
entrepreneurial research were contacted. Three experts denied to participate and no
response was recevied from the remaining two experts. Eventually five experts agreed
to be a part of final expert panel. Three industry experts and two academicians were
part of expert panel formed as a Delphi group. Though there are no general agreement
on group size for Delphi method, but Rowe and Wright (2001) and Green, Armstrong
and Graefe (2007) recommend an expert panel of five to twenty is ideal. The decision
to use the Delphi technique is its robustness as it emphasize more on a group than on
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an individual, as stated by Martino (1993). Lummus, Vokurka and Duclos (2005)

mention Delphi technique is a specialized form of group interaction that generates
ideas, projection and solutions. This technique was developed by Rand Corporation
as a means of gaining consensus from a group of experts. The startup barriers identified
in phase 1 were evaluated through the literature, and we asked the Delphi group to
rank all the barriers based on following linguistic scales as provided in Table 1.
Table 1: Membership Function of Linguistic Scale (Example)

Fuzzy Number Linguistic Scale of fuzzy number
9 Perfect (8,9,10)
8 Absolute (7,8,9)
7 Very good (6,7,8)
6 Fairly good (5,6,7)
5 Good (4,5,6)
4 Preferable (3,4,5)
3 Not bad (2,3,4)
2 Weak advantage (1,2,3)
1 Equal (1,1,1)
Source: Sun (2010)
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was developed by Satty (1980) and has
been extensively used by both academics and professionals. AHP is a trusted method
for solving complex decision problems by decomposing the problem into sub-problems.
AHP technique has been previsouly used by Babu and Sharma (2005) and Nagesha
(2005) in vendor selection studies. Fuzzy AHP, which is a more advanced technique is
used in tourism (Wang, Jung, Yeo and Chou, 2014; and Chen and Lee, 2011) operations
management (Kumar and Garg, 2017; Singh, Gunasekaran and Kumar, 2018) and
recently used in entrepreneurship research (Amrita, Garg, and Singh, 2018; and Kazemi
and Aliei, 2019). A Fuzzy AHP (Laarhoven and Pedrycz, 1983) technique is used to
categorize and prioritize startup barriers. The technique of Fuzzy AHP is based on
fuzzy set theory (Zadeh, 1965). This is used to addresses the vagueness of human
thought as the use of intervals in the Fuzzy set theory gives more precise results as
against fixed value judgment. Moreover, Fuzzy AHP is one of the best techniques for
decisions making with complex criteria structures at different levels. The complexity
in the barrier prioritization resulted in the use of Fuzzy AHP in this study. Buckley
(1985)came up with the Fuzzy AHP algorithm to calculate weights with trapezoidal
fuzzy numbers, which over came the shortcomings mentioned by Yang and Chen. Fuzzy
AHP combined Satty’s AHP and fuzzy set theory to capture uncertain imprecise expert’s
judgment by handling linguistic variables. Chang (1996) explained the concept of
fuzzy AHP by the following definitions:
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Definition 1: Let M  F(R) can be called fuzzy numbers if:
1) Exists x 0  R such that  M( x 0 )  1
2) For any  [0,1], A  [ x,  A ( x )  a is a closed interval. R represents the

real numbers, and F(R) represents all fuzzy sets.
Definition 2: M1=(lo 1, mo 1, up 1) and M2=(lo 2, mo2, up2) are two fuzzy triangular
numbers then the algebraic operation can be expressed as following:
M1  M2=(lo1, mo1, up1)(lo2, mo2, up2) = (lo1+lo2, mo1+mo2, up1+up2) ...(2.1)
M1 M2=(lo1, mo1, up1) (lo2, mo2, up2) = (lo1–up2, mo1–mo2, up1–lo2) ...(2.2)
M1  M2=(lo1, mo1, up1)(lo2, mo2, up2) = (lo1,lo2, mo1,mo2, up1,up2) ...(2.3)
M1 ∅ M2=(lo1, mo1, up1)∅ (lo2, mo2, up2) = (lo1/up2, mo1/ mo2, up1/lo2) ...(2.4)
  M1=( lo1,  mo1,  up1) where  >0 ...(2.5)
 1 1 1 
M11  (lo1 , mo1 , up1 )1   , ,  ...(2.6)
 up1 mo1 lo1 
Chang’s fuzzy AHP can be applied using
M1gi , M2gi , Mgi3 ,... ... ... ... M mgi ,
j
Where gi is the goal set (i = 1,2,3....n) and M gi where (j=1,2,3....m) are the
triangular fuzzy numbers.
1 2 3 m
Definition 3: Let Mgi , M gi , Mgi ,... ... ... ... M gi , are the values for extended analysis of
ith object for m goals. Then it can be defined as the following:
m n m –1
Si   M [ M
j 1
j
gi
i 1 j 1
j
gi ]
a) Presentation of fuzzy numbers for pairwise comparison scale:
1 1 1
a ij1  ( , , )
up mo lo
b) Calculation of priority vectors of fuzzy AHP. Let A=(aij)n X m be the fuzzy pairwise
comparison matrix, where aij=(lij, mij, uij) which are satisfied with:
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1 1 1
loij  , mo ij  , upij 
lo ji mo ji up ji
Definition 4: The degree of possibility of M1 > M2 is defined as:
V( M1  M2 )  sup[min(  M1 ( x),  M2 ( y))]

x y
When a pair (x,y) exists such that x > y and M1 (x)=M2 (y)=1 then we have
V(M1 > M2)=1.
Since M1 and M2 are convex fuzzy numbers we have:
 
1 if mo2  mo1 
 
V( M1  M2 )  0 if lo1  up2 
 lo1  up2 
( mo  up )  ( mo  lo ) otherwise 
 2 2 1 1 
Where d is the highest intersection point M1 and M2 as shown in Figure 1 below.
Definition 5: Degree of possibility for a convex fuzzy number S to be greater than k
convex fuzzy numbers Si(i = 1, 2, 3....,k) can be defined as:
Figure 1: The Intersection of Fuzzy Numbers
M1 M2
1
Membership
Function
d
Fuzzy Value
d
Source: Chang (1996)
V(S  S1 , S2 ,...., Sk )  V[(S  S1 ),(S  S2 ),... ... ..(S  Sk )]
min V(S  Si ), i  1,2,...., k
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Assume that d'( Mi )  min V(Si  Sk ) for k  1,2,... n, k  i then the weight vectors
are given as W '  ( d'( M1 ), d'( M2 ),... ... ..., d'( Mm ))T
With normalization, normalized weight vectors are given as:
W  ( d( M1 ), d( M2 ), ... ... ..., d( Mm ))T

After ranking all the startup barriers, we ran the hierarchical clustering on the
data to form clusters. This is a useful step as it allows to develop solutions for cluster-
specific barriers andnot individual barriers. In total, five clusters were found after
administering the hierarchical clustering on the data. These five solutions would
broadly solve all twenty-five startup barriers.
PHASE 3: FUZZY TOPSIS
In addition to Fuzzy AHP, the Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to
Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to rank the solutions for startup barriers. TOPSIS is
a multi-criteria decision analysis method initially developed by Hwang and Yoon (1981).
The technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) was
introduced and first used by (Hwang and Yoon, 1981). Since then fuzzy TOPSIS is
used in various domains such as operations (Singh, Gunasekaran and Kumar, 2018)
and entrepreneurship (Metvaee, 2019). Five cluster solutions that were obtained in
phase 2 will be ranked based on TOPSIS. TOPSIS will help in choosing an alternative
that has the shortest distance from the positive ideal solution and the farthest distance
from the negative ideal solution. This technique is relevant to use becausethe use of
absolute values is unrealistic. Therefore, the application of linguistic value and fuzzy
set theory is undertaken. The following linguistic scale,as shown in Table 2,were used
to define the ratings of the various solutions by a panel of five experts from the industry
and academics.
Table 2: Linguistic Scales for the Rating of Each Alternative

Linguistic Variable Corresponding Triangular Fuzzy Number
Very poor (VP) (0,0,1)
Poor (P) (0,1,3)
Rather Poor (RP) (1,3,5)
Fair (F) (3,5,7)
Rather Good (RG) (5,7,9)
Good (G) (7,9,10)
Very Good (VG) (9,9,10)
Source: Chen and Hwang (1992)
The steps involved in Fuzzy TOPSIS are as follows:
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Step 1: Calculate the normalized decision matrix

We calculated the normalized value rij as:
fij
rij 
j=1, 2,...., J; i=1, 2,....,n;

J 2
f
j 1 ij
Step 2: Calculate the weighted normalized decision matrix

The weighted normalized value vij is calculated as:
vij = wi rij, j = 1,2,…..,J; i = 1,2,….,n;

n
where wi is the weight of the ith attribute or criterion, and i 1
Wi  1
Step 3: Determine the ideal and negative-ideal solution
A *  {v1* , v*2 , ... ... ., v*n )
 {(max vij | i  I' ),( min vij | i  I' ' )},

j j
A   {v1 , v2 , ... ... , v n }
 {( min vij |i  I' ),( max vij | i  I' ' )},

j j
Where I' is associated with benefit criteria, and I'' is associated with cost criteria.
Step 4: Calculate the separation measures, using the n-dimensional Euclidean
distance
The separation of each alternative from the ideal solution is given as:

n
D*j  i 1
( v ij  v*i )2 j = 1,2,…..,J
Similarly, the separation from the negative ideal solution is given as:

n
D j  i 1
( vij  v i )2 j = 1,2,…..,J
Step 5:Calculate the relative closeness to the ideal solution

The relative closeness of the alternative aj concerning A* is defined as:
* D j
C 
j j = 1,2,…..,J
D*j  D j
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Step 6: The closeness coefficients calculated from step 5 are ranked in decreasing
order
Figure 2: Flow chart of Research Methodology
Source: Authors’ Analysis
FINDINGS
Barriers and solutions were categorized and listed as shown in Figure 3 flowchart. We
identified barriers and solutions in three phases. Phase one include types of barriers,
phase two contains twenty five barriers, and the last phase identified the solutions
proposed in the literature to overcome startup barriers.
PHASE 1: IDENTIFICATION OF STARTUP BARRIERS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS
Four categories of startup barriers were identified that include funding related,
government-related, operations related, and organizational related. Each startup barrier
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was given a specific code and categorized into sub-criteria under four significant
factors derived from MacMillan’s work.
PHASE 2: FUZZY AHP
Buckley (1985) came up with the Fuzzy AHP algorithm to calculate weights with
trapezoidal fuzzy numbers which overcame the shortcomings mentioned by Yang and
Chen. Fuzzy AHP combined Satty’s AHP and fuzzy set theory to capture uncertain
imprecise expert’s judgment by handling linguistic variables. Various startup barriers
were identified which has references in the literature as shown in Table 3, thus making
sure that these are the most prominent barriers experienced by startups. Five experts
from industry and academia were chosen and asked to rank all the barriers.The top-
ranked startup barrier is governmentally related, i.e., the government to simplify the
process. For example, the Israeli government has extended support to the budding
startups, thus encouraging the growth of startups in the country. Indian government
has also come up with Make in India, and Startup India campaigns to support budding
startups by simplified the steps and procedure for registration for startups. The next
barrier is funding related; to deal with customers in a B2C environment requires
enormous investments. The same way other barriers are ranked and entrepreneurs
can overcome these barriers as per the criticality of the barriers.
Figure 3: Decision Sequence for Prioritizing Solutions

to Overcome Startup Barriers
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Table 3: Rankings for Startup Barriers After Applying Fuzzy AHP
Cumulated Issues Authors(year)
Sub
Sub
Weight
Weight
Weight
Barrier
Type of
Criteria
Criteria
Barriers
Barriers
Finalized
Final Rank
FR 0.3338 FR1 0.0958 Startups suffered due to Sarkar and Dutta (2017); Pattanaik (2019) 0.031971 14
demonetization
FR FR2 0.0627 Lack of investors in tier 2 and Mabhungu et al. (2011); Mount and Niro (1995); 0.020916 18
tier 3 cities Pissarides (1999)
FR FR3 0.1193 High cost and lack of Harris, Grubb III and Hebert (2005); Cohoon, 0.039834 12
funding Wadhwa and Mitchell (2010); Dunn and Liang
(2011); Cressy (2002); Ossa (2014); Buttner and
Rosen (1989); Audretsch and Lehmann (2008);
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Arif and Khan (2019)
FR FR4 0.0704 Ventures fail and Investors Sapienza and De Clercq (2000) 0.023500 16
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become co-promoter
FR FR5 0.0660 Chinese investors entering in Liu (2014); Liu, Zhang and Hu (2006); 0.022040 17
Indian market Bhagavatula, Mudambi and Murmann (2019)
FR FR6 0.1566 Bootstrapping or VC funding Salamzadeh and Kawamorita (2015); Vanacker 0.052272 8
et al. (2011); Ebben and Johnson (2006); Won
and Bae (2019)

FR FR7 0.0316 Profitability to investors Cardon et al. (2009); Crow (2005); Baum et al. 0.010548 19
(2000); Read et al. (2009)
FR FR8 0.3102 Understanding customers Pandya and Dholakia (2005); Pandya and 0.103565 2
Dholakia (2007); Nirwan and Dhewanto (2015);

Zhu (2002)
FR FR9 0.0874 Legal clauses to deal with Ossnabrugge and Robinson (2000) 0.029176 15
investors
Table 3 (Cont.)
Sub
Sub
Weight
Weight
Weight
Barrier
Type of
Criteria
Criteria
Barriers
Barriers
Finalized
Final Rank
GR 0.2008 GR1 0.273 Government to encourage Sarkar and Dutta (2017); Pal, Tiwari and 0.054712 7
digitization and cash wallets Khandelwal (2019)
GR GR2 0.547 Government to simplify the Kon et al. (2014); Buss et al. (1991); Pope (2001); 0.109857 1
process for startup Cardon et al. (2011); Vegetti and Adãscãliþei
(2017); Priya (2019)
GR GR3 0.180 Government to legalize Conley (2017); Foyster (2018); Hays and 0.036191 13
alternative cryptocurrencies Kirilenko (2019)
OPR 0.4506 OPR1 0.1384 Steps to follow if business is Nobel (2011); Terho et al. (2015); Bradberry 0.062350 6
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not doing well (2011); Mitchell et al. (2004); Vu (2012); Costello
et al. (2011)
OPR OPR2 0.0894 Space for startup Saxena (2017); Saunders (2003), Kornel (2017); 0.040286 11
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Gura (2015); Bliemel et al. (2016); Shrestha
(2016)
OPR OPR3 0.1900 Fragmented customer base Ghobadian et al. (1994); Mao and Humprey 0.085625 3
(2012); Dickerson and Sandholm (2016); Rinsche
(2017); Regalado (2018)
OPR OPR4 0.1149 Backend folks managing Osgood (2016); Friedlmaier et al. (2016) 0.051785 9
Startups
OPR OPR5 0.1884 Shortage of incubators Fashanu (2017); Pittaway and Cope (2007); 0.084910 4
Ojala and Heikkilä (2011)
OPR OPR6 0.0000 Lack of female in startups Wasihun and Paul (2011); Rahman et al. (2013); 0.000000 25
because of extended hour Tsuchiya (2010); Robinson and Finley (2007);
requirements Bamberger et al. (1989); Winn (2005); Huarng et
al. (2012); Raghuvanshi et al. (2017)
Table 3 (Cont.)
Sub
Sub
Weight
Weight
Weight
Barrier
Type of
Criteria
Criteria
Barriers
Barriers
Finalized
Final Rank
OPR OPR7 0.1684 Overcoming the Terho et al. (2015); McNamara and McNamara 0.075874 5
conventional thoughts (2019); Feenberg (1999); Martin-Gutiérrez et al.
(2017); Lee (2016); Brown and Petersen (2009);
Gourav et al. (2017); Coates et al. (2008); Altafim
et al. (2016)
OPR OPR8 0.0083 Fund providers influence the Haines (2016); Dutia (2014); Toole and Turvey 0.003729 22
entrepreneur decisions (2009); Pathak et al. (2013); Fourati and Affes
(2014); Smolarski and Kut (2011); Appelhoff et
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al. (2016)
OPR OPR9 0.1023 High investments and Hand et al. (2009); Huang and Oppewal (2006); 0.046080 10
regular money infusion for Chu and Lu (2007); Bor (2014); Davis and Zweig
109 No. 1
B2C (2014); Berger et al. (2001); Berger and Udell
(2002); Weber et al. (2011); Agarwal and Tuteja
(2018)
ORGR 0.0148 ORGR1 0.3549 Lack of documentation and Mathews (2012); Blank and Dorf (2012) 0.005245 20
paper work
ORGR ORGR2 0.3217 Lack of organizational Mikkonen (2018); Ven et al. (1984); Bamberger 0.004754 21
structure et al. (1989)
ORGR ORGR3 0.2031 One way learning path Kafai (1996); Isbister et al. (2010); Choi et al. 0.003001 23
(2017)
ORGR ORGR4 0.1203 Acquisition of small startup Kim et al. (2014); Prashantham and Birkinshaw 0.001778 24
(2008)
After ranking all startup barriers, a hierarchical clustering was used for the formation
of clusters. This step is useful as it allows to develop solutions for cluster-specific
barriers,not individual barriers. In Figure 4, Y-axis is a measure of closeness of barriers
and X-axis represents individual barriers with their ranks enclosed in parentheses.
The black dotted line represents the maximum distance where clusters are well
separated from each other. We identified five clusters after applying the hierarchical
clustering on the data. These five solutions would broadly solve all twenty-five barriers.
We can see cluster number one comprised of 4 barriers, i.e., OPR3(15), OPR5(17),
FR8(8) and GR2(11). The number in parentheses specify their overall rank out of 25
barriers. For example, OPR3 has an overall critical rank of 15 among 25 barriers.
Similarly, we can see the formation of other clusters with the use of hierarchical
custering.
Figure 4: Hierarchical Clustering to Overcome Barriers
Source: Authors’ Calculations
PHASE 3: FUZZY TOPSIS

The technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) was
introduced and first used by (Hwang and Yoon, 1981). TOPSIS help in choosing an
alternative that has the shortest distance from the positive ideal solution and the
farthest distance from the negative ideal solution. This technique is relevant to use
because,in practice the use of absolute values is unrealistic. Therefore, the application
of linguistic value and fuzzy set theory is done.
The top-rated solution that needs to be implemented by entrepreneurs is proper
planning from the start to avoid shut down of a startup. The second priority solution is
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mentorship, as it is always beneficial to have a mentor who has good knowledge of the
business and so on.
It is always beneficial to have a mentor who has good knowledge of the business
and followed by other solutions as per their priorities are given below in Table 4. Final
Table 4: Rankings for the Solution of Startup Barriers
After Applying Fuzzy TOPSIS
Finalized
Final Rank
Solutions Authors (year) Weight
Solutions
Solutions
Government Conley (2017); Ofek and Eiran (2017); Vassilakis 0.8885 3
intervention and et al. (2007); Schubert and Hausler (2001);
support Saxena (2017); Kornel (2017); Berger and Udell
(2002); Saberi and Hamdan (2019)
Boost mentorship and Mount and Niro (1995); Liu (2014); Liu et al. 0.8949 2
workshops on best (2006); Ossnabrugge and Robinson (2000);
practices Sapienza and De Clercq (2010); Bradberry
(2011); Mitchell et al. (2004); Ibeme (2020)
Building operational Garbugli (2014); Lam et al. (2009); Gura (2015); 0.8314 4
efficiency Söderblom et al. (2015); Gennari and Lotti
(2013); Schmidt (2018); Sheth (2018); Trimi
and Berbegal (2012); Rajagopal (2021)
Making rational Pistorius (2017); Huang and Oppewal (2006); 0.8212 5
decisions (liquidate Chu and Lu (2007); Terho et al. (2015); Aleisa
or merge) et al. (2013); Lee (2016); Prashantham et al.
(2008)
Focus on Davis and Zweig (2005); Tsuchiya (2010); 0.9108 1
details(documentation Robinson et al. (2007); Vanacker et al. (2011);
and planning) Bamberger et al. (1989); Mikkonen (2018);
Mathews (2012); Blank and Dorf (2012)
Table 5: Ranking of Solutions

Solution
Solutions d+i d –i CCi Rank
Code
S5 Focus on details (documentation and planning) 6.2107 63.4325 0.9108 1
S2 Boost mentorship and workshops on best practices 6.8956 58.7262 0.8949 2
S1 Government intervention and support 7.7298 61.6332 0.8886 3
S3 Building operational efficiency 11.1792 55.1630 0.8315 4
S4 Taking rational decisions (liquidate/merge) 11.8301 54.3265 0.8212 5
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rank solutions as mentioned in Table 5 provide a good view to entrepreneurs to

implement the solutions according to prioritization, thus tackling all twenty five startup
barriers.
The external validity is essential to establish the generalizability of results (Steckler
and McLeroy, 2008). Therefore, to establish the validity of results expert panel was
divided into two groups and the mean and standard deviation values were compared
(Alaa, Albakri, Singh, Hammed, Zaidan, Zaidan and Jasim, 2019) which was
statistically insignificant.
DISCUSSION
Focus on details, i.e., documentation and planning before estabilishing a startup is
essential. Davis and Zweig (2005), Tsuchiya (2010), Mikkonen (2018), Mathews (2012),
and Blank and Dorf (2012) mention planning and documentation is important for a
startup success. Mentorship is ranked as a second most important solution in this
study. Researchers such as Liu (2014), Liu, Zhang and Hu (2006), Sapienza and De
Clercq (2000), Bradberry (2011) and Ibeme (2020) claim entrepreneurs with right
mentors have more chances of startup survival. The mentors usually are industry experts
that can guide first generation entrepreneurs to overcome the hurdles faced by novice
entrepreneurs. Researchers like Conley (2017), Ofek and Eiran (2017), Saxena (2017),
Kornel (2017), and Saberi and Hamdan (2019) highlight the criticality of government
policies in deciding the startup failure and success. Government also understand that
supporting entrepreneurs with favorable policies is important, thus take multiple steps
which includes measures such as tax rebate, easier startup setup policies and quick
documentation to help entrepreneurs. To build an operational efficiency is important
for a startup as mentioned by Garbugli (2014), Gura (2015), Söderblom, Samuelsson,
Wiklund and Sandberg (2015), Schmidt (2018), Sheth (2018) and Rajagopal (2021)
to avoid losses and debunk. Building operational efficiency will result in the cost
effectiveness and higher productivity which is essential to survive the early years of
startup limited funds and experience. Lastly, making rational decision is important for
startup and researchers such as Pistorius (2017), Terho et al. (2015), Aleisa, Recker,
Liddle and Brown (2013) and Lee (2016) have emphasized that business pivoting is
essential if startup is not doing well.
RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE SCOPE

In this study top-ranked problems in each category of barriers were analyzed. The
current research article synthesizes the startup barriers and solutions thereof mentioned
in the academic literature. This study extends the research by ranking the barriers
ans solutions them with help of an expert panel comprising experts from industry and
academia. The hierarchical clustering was used to group barriers for which the solutions
can be proposed. This is a more practicle appraoch by keeping whole cluster of
homogeneous barriers together rather than proposing solutions for individual barriers.
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Jung, Bae and Liu (2009) has used hierarchical clustering to cluster business process
models to propose a new process design. Another technique used in the study is fuzzy
AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS. These two methods for prioritization has previously been
used independently in the entrepreneruship literature, but the joint usage of both the
methods in the entrepreneruship research is done for the first time. The motivation to
jointly apply these two techniques came from the work of Singh, Gunasekaran, and
Kumar (2018) and Yazdi, Korhan, and Daneshvar (2020) where these techniques were
used for the prioritization and management of cold chains. The prioritization of possible
solutions for the startup to address the barriers is discussed in this study which could
be beneficial for the researchers and practitioners before execution. The study identifies
‘focus on details’ as the top priority solution for the startups. Several authors such as
Davis and Zweig (2005), Tsuchiya (2010), Robinson and Finley (2007), Vanacker,
Manigart, Meuleman, and Sels (2011) and Mikkonen (2018) has mentioned the ‘need
of planning’ and ‘focus on detailing’ to build a successful startup. Mentorship can
provide the right guidance to the startups and ranked second in the study in terms of
importance. Liu (2014), Bradberry (2011), Mitchell, Mitchell and Smith (2004) and
Ibeme (2020) mention the importance of ‘mentorship’ for a startup success. ‘Government
intervention and support’ is ranked third in the solution list of startups. It is observed
that startups initially require relaxation in taxes and easy setup process for which
government can facilitate and ease the required processes. Many authors like Conley
(2017), Ofek and Eiran (2017), Saxena (2017), Kornel (2017), Berger and Udell (2002)
and Saberi and Hamdan (2019) stated it as one of the priorities solution. Fourth
priority solution is ‘building operational efficiency’ which will prevent startups to avoid
waste of efforts and money by optimizing the business processes, authors such as
Söderblom, Samuelsson, Wiklund and Sandberg (2015), Schmidt and Robert (2018),
Sheth (2018) and Rajagopal (2021) mention the need for operational efficiency. Fifth
priority solution is ‘taking rational decisions’ when startup is not doing well and there
is need to pivot the business altogether. Entrepreneurs tend to keep dragging
unprofitable business however authors such as Pistorius (2017), Terho et al. (2015),
Aleisa, Recker, Liddle and Brown (2013) and Lee (2016) stated the importance of
rational decision making and change of business altogether, if required.
In the category of funding related barriers, the analysis shows ‘understanding
customers’ as the top-ranked barrier. Nirwan and Dhewanto (2015) mention early
customer interaction and looking beyond the customer’s stated problem as the important
prerequisites to begin the entrepreneurial journey. Overcoming this barrier is significant
for an entrepreneur who looks forward to a startup jourmey. Thus, it is suggested that
a startup entrepreneur should not merely focus on understanding their customers and
working towards solving the customer’s problem, but also work towards findings ways
to innovate their solutions by being obsessed with the customers as followed by the
founders of Amazon and Netflix.
In the category of governmental related barriers, the analysis reveals ‘government
to simplify the process for startup’ as the top-ranked barrier. Buss, Popovich and Gemmel
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(1991) mentioned getting public or private assistance is one of the biggest obstacles
startups face. Pope (2001) mentions the impact of government policy, i.e., Goods and
Services Tax (GST) on small businesses in Australian context. This barrier is significant
for entrepreneurs as the role and government support is vital for setting startup in the
initial years of inception. Thus, government can help the startups by giving relaxation
in documentation and easy taxation in the early years for a startup.
In the category of operational related barriers, the analysis shows ‘fragmented
customer base’ as the top-ranked barrier. Ghobadian, Speller and Jones (1994) mentions
operations account for around 30%-40% of service organization costs because they are
‘doing things wrong’. In this category, meeting customer expectations and waste
elimination are two significant challenges faced by entrepreneurs. This barrier is
significant for entrepreneurs as the need to meet customer expectations is not sufficient
for a business to grow but to exercise control over reduction of service costs with the
implementation of innovative solutions such as SaaS, SSTs, etc.
In the category of organizational related barriers, the analysis highlight ‘lack of
documentation and paperwork’ as the top-ranked barrier. Mathews (2012) and Blank
and Dorf (2012) reported critical barriers that are different from this study and the
contextual differences in terms of country could be one of the reasons for it. This
barrier is significant to entrepreneurs especially in the Indian context as well as in the
western world as most of the startups make blueprint ready for a well-planned execution
of activities related to startup. Whereas only few Indian startups have started with
proper blueprints in advance.
In the analysis of this study, using the hierarchical clustering and fuzzy TOPSIS
method we have proposed five solutions for 25 startup barriers in their order of priority.
The methods used in this study for analysis and ranking of the solutions is a unique
contribution of our study which is not previously undertaken. For entrepreneurs, it is
of utmost importance to overcome the impediments by applying the solutions in their
ranking order to minimize the impact of twenty five startup barriers.
World’s largest economy, China can be an aggressive investor in the Indian startups.
This may result in higher control of Chinese investors in Indian startups. One of the
conundra for the Indian startups is indecisiveness to run a business entity through
bootstrapping or venture capital funding. The decision to expand the business operations
must be an intellectual activity and not be done in a jiffy. The inclination to look for
a venture capitalist to fund the business is higher compared to starting operations as
bootstrap. It needs to be understood that though fast progress is foreseen through VC
funding, quicker decisions are possible only through bootstrapping, an essential
component for the initial years for any startup. The policy decisions about more
accessible and faster VC funding are proposed by the authors. This is also a suggested
field of study for future researchers to fund the difference in the success rate of businesses
funded through venture capitalist versus bootstrapping. It is essential to have the
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crystalline formation of legal clauses for the disbursement and repayment of funds,
risk-sharing, and returns by and with the investors. This is suggested to formulate pro-
entrepreneurs policies to raise funds within and outside the national boundaries. The
variation in the perception of growth is observed. Where founders pitch startup by
sharing the growth path, investors are only interested in the profitability. This is the
responsibility of the policymakers to safeguard investors to promote hassle-free funding.
For researchers, drivers for startup investors emerged as one of the areas of study. It
may also be an exciting area of study to prioritize the drivers and can map profitability
among these drivers. According to the author’s knowledge, no prior studies were
conducted to segregate the impediments of startups in the manufacturing, tertiary
land service sectors. Similarly, no prior studies identify the challenges in B2B and B2C
related entities registered as startups. For the promotion of startups and innovation
culture in the country, the government is expected to allocate startup parks and zones
that offer the necessary infrastructure.
CONCLUSION
The current study primarily helps to list and rank the various barriers encountered by
startups. From a managerial point of view, entrepreneurs should focus on these barriers in
order of their criticality and the possible solutions to overcome these barriers. The study
has used Hierarchical Clustering (HC) to come up with the optimized number of solutions
to address twenty five barriers encountered by a startup. Our research paper does not end
up the budding entrepreneurs to look for solutions to overcome the barriers listed in our
article. We went one step further and provided solutions to handle the impediments
faced by startups along with their priority levels. From a managerial point of view, these
solutions can be implemented in their order of priority to overcome the barriers.
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SOUTH ASIAN JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT

Modeling Start-up Barriers and

entrepreneurs, the definition given by Weickmiss lucidity and generate ambiguity to

entrepreneurs to build the innovation culture in the country. However, it is difficult

RATIONALE OF THIS STUDY

proposed classification and prioritization of startup barriers and solutions. Lastly,

leadership style as the necessary prerequisites to manage a startup from an organizational

an individual, as stated by Martino (1993). Lummus, Vokurka and Duclos (2005)

Table 1: Membership Function of Linguistic Scale (Example)

Definition 1: Let M  F(R) can be called fuzzy numbers if:

1) Exists x 0  R such that  M( x 0 )  1

2) For any  [0,1], A  [ x,  A ( x )  a is a closed interval. R represents the

M1  M2=(lo1, mo1, up1)(lo2, mo2, up2) = (lo1+lo2, mo1+mo2, up1+up2) ...(2.1)

M1  M2=(lo1, mo1, up1)(lo2, mo2, up2) = (lo1,lo2, mo1,mo2, up1,up2) ...(2.3)

  M1=( lo1,  mo1,  up1) where  >0 ...(2.5)

Chang’s fuzzy AHP can be applied using

M1gi , M2gi , Mgi3 ,... ... ... ... M mgi ,

a) Presentation of fuzzy numbers for pairwise comparison scale:

Definition 4: The degree of possibility of M1 > M2 is defined as:

V( M1  M2 )  sup[min(  M1 ( x),  M2 ( y))]

Figure 1: The Intersection of Fuzzy Numbers

Source: Chang (1996)

V(S  S1 , S2 ,...., Sk )  V[(S  S1 ),(S  S2 ),... ... ..(S  Sk )]

min V(S  Si ), i  1,2,...., k

With normalization, normalized weight vectors are given as:

W  ( d( M1 ), d( M2 ), ... ... ..., d( Mm ))T

Table 2: Linguistic Scales for the Rating of Each Alternative

The steps involved in Fuzzy TOPSIS are as follows:

Step 1: Calculate the normalized decision matrix

Step 2: Calculate the weighted normalized decision matrix

Step 3: Determine the ideal and negative-ideal solution

A *  {v1* , v*2 , ... ... ., v*n )

 {(max vij | i  I' ),( min vij | i  I' ' )},

A   {v1 , v2 , ... ... , v n }

 {( min vij |i  I' ),( max vij | i  I' ' )},

Step 5:Calculate the relative closeness to the ideal solution

Figure 2: Flow chart of Research Methodology

Source: Authors’ Analysis

Figure 3: Decision Sequence for Prioritizing Solutions

Source: Authors’ Analysis

Cumulated Issues Authors(year)

and Bae (2019)

Dholakia (2007); Nirwan and Dhewanto (2015);

Cumulated Issues Authors(year)

Cumulated Issues Authors(year)

Figure 4: Hierarchical Clustering to Overcome Barriers

Source: Authors’ Calculations

PHASE 3: FUZZY TOPSIS

Source: Authors’ Calculations

Table 5: Ranking of Solutions

rank solutions as mentioned in Table 5 provide a good view to entrepreneurs to

RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE SCOPE

45. ETbureau (2018). Retrived March 28, 2019, from https://economictimes.

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A *  {v1* , v2 , ... ... ., vn )