It depends on what you mean by fail!

I only help software startup founders - not all founders.

I believe that there's no excuse for these founders to fail to get a product to market, if they have the funding to do it of course. Even then, there's a lot founders can do (for free!) to maximise the chance of getting funding.

That said, I see many founders DO fail to get to market - I'm on a mission to try to prevent this!

Now if you mean fail to make a profit, that's a different story. Obviously one of the first thing's founders should do is talk to prospective customers and identify a pain/problem that they are willing to pay for. That's a start but you never really know until people actually pay (and even then can you find enough of them?) so you should get to MVP as quickly and cheaply as possible (without compromising too much on quality). I show founders how to do that.

I believe that the industry standard is 90% of startups failing within the first year of launch. However, the more founders do things properly- including, importantly, getting help - I believe this number can be reduced.

Of my 21 products, I think that about 7 were very profitable (so 33% success for me which I count as a win). And I learned TONS from my 'failures'.