I love working with high school entrepreneurs at LaunchX. Their drive, innovativeness, and gusto inspire and energize me. I’m equally excited by the benefits they gain from building startups alongside other startup teams. When bright, hard‑working teams feed off one another’s ideas and momentum, the resulting energy and synergy can be incredibly powerful. The experience can boost morale, accelerate technical development, sharpen marketing skills, and drive rapid growth.
But it’s not all sunshine and fake mustaches. There are very real — and sometimes disruptive — challenges that arise in this kind of environment. Below are some of the most common pitfalls I’ve observed, along with the strategies we use to combat them.
Groupthink & Copycatting
Because LaunchX teams work in close proximity and interact constantly, there’s a natural tendency to mirror what other teams are doing. One team decides to run customer surveys, and suddenly half the cohort feels they should do the same — whether it’s relevant to their stage or not. Another team forms a legal entity due to genuine business risk, and soon others panic about needing legal protection even when their circumstances are entirely different. A team builds a prototype, and others abandon critical market research to rush into building something physical.
This bandwagon effect is damaging. It pulls teams away from what their startup actually needs and leads to misallocated time, energy, and resources.
To counter this, I bring all teams together and project the logos of Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. I ask them to debate which company is “more successful” and why. Inevitably, strong arguments emerge for each. Then I share that each company dominates a different metric — users, revenue, profit, etc. The lesson becomes clear: success depends on your chosen metrics and goals, not someone else’s. The takeaway is simple and powerful: define what success means for your startup, and stay focused on that.
Internal Team Issues
LaunchX participants are ambitious, driven, and eager to make an impact. While this fuel creates incredible momentum, it can also spark friction. Team conflict is not trivial — in fact, internal misalignment is one of the leading causes of startup failure.
Preventative Structure
To get ahead of issues, we use a Team Norms Agreement that helps teams clarify:
- Shared values and motivations
- Vision and goals
- Roles and responsibilities
- Working styles and communication expectations
- Decision-making processes
While this framework helps, it can’t prevent every challenge.
Misaligned Goals
One common source of tension is differing personal motivations — innovation, impact, profit, learning, or prestige. When unspoken, these differences lead to frustration and power struggles. We address this early by having team members explicitly share their goals and align on a collective purpose, creating space for compromise and clarity.
Perceived Workload Imbalance
Resentment often builds when teammates feel they’re doing more than others. To illuminate this, we run an anonymous survey asking each member to estimate their own and others’ workload contributions. The average perceived contribution consistently lands around 115–120% per person — revealing that most people feel overextended while underestimating invisible work done by others.
This opens the door for honest dialogue, empathy, and improved collaboration. As people begin to see one another as whole humans — not just task executors — trust deepens and cohesion improves.
Resistance to Feedback
Another issue arises when confident team members rationalize their choices by clinging to the one data point that supports them, instead of engaging with contradictory feedback. Instead of reflecting, they defend. Our approach: encourage curiosity over certainty and teach that real growth comes from sitting with discomfort.
Competition vs. Collaboration
Highly motivated individuals naturally want to stand out — but a startup ecosystem thrives on collaboration, not cutthroat competition. We intentionally foster this through:
- Team progress-sharing sessions
- The Reciprocity Ring, where students help other teams meet needs
- Creative events like mock TED Talks on non-startup topics
We also avoid forced rankings or public pitch scoring. These systems often derail growth by shifting focus from progress to comparison. Instead, we prioritize a culture where teams aim to be better than they were yesterday — not better than each other.
Diversity is also central to this approach. Beyond inclusivity, diverse teams demonstrably perform better: they innovate more, think more critically, and make stronger decisions. We intentionally cultivate diversity across venture types, skills, backgrounds, and identities.
Overworking & Undersleeping
There’s a persistent myth that success requires endless hustle. In reality, productivity plummets beyond 50 hours per week. Overwork leads to burnout, errors, and poor decision-making — all fatal to startups.
We actively encourage balance through community activities and intentional downtime. Sleep, however, remains harder to regulate. Rather than enforcing restrictions, we focus on education and awareness — emphasizing how rest sharpens thinking, creativity, and resilience.
Additional Tools We Use
Investment Simulation
Students distribute fake money across teams (excluding their own). The goal isn’t just to evaluate ideas, but team cohesion and clarity. Feedback is contextualized and shared privately to promote reflection, not shame.
Mock Board of Directors
Teams work with panels of mentors to gain strategic guidance. Diverging opinions highlight multiple paths forward, while consensus signals strong alignment. We ensure innovation isn’t stifled by authority.
Required Milestones
Used sparingly, these are last-resort reality checks. Teams must hit defined goals (e.g., pre-orders) or pivot. These milestones are most effective when co-created with the team to ensure ownership and buy-in.
The Foundation: Communication
Open communication is the most powerful tool we have. Many problems stem not from poor intent, but from silence, misinterpretation, or lack of clarity. Teaching teams to speak honestly, listen deeply, and address issues early is often the difference between a thriving startup and a fractured one.
Strong teams don’t avoid conflict — they engage with it thoughtfully, constructively, and courageously. And that is what ultimately fuels sustainable success.
Laurie Stach 