I have been involved with the development and consulting of several startups over the last 15 years. Some of them failed, others managed to stay afloat over time. At one point I even had under my command the biggest Portal in Greece, and few of the most traffic generating websites in the gaming industry worldwide.

While that’s not totally relevant I just wanted to back up my claims with some real achievements and experience. Either way, we got the introduction to this article underway – we will try to figure out the good and the bad startup ideas.What this article will not be is another list of things you need to have to create your own startup. You probably can get tons of those from uncle Google, so let’s not be repetitive and try to dig deeper.

This article is going to be more about the factors you need to take into consideration. Launching a startup is actually not that hard, the tricky part is not letting it die.So let’s begin with a clear -and at the same time hard- question:

Why might you fail?

Seven months ago a huge hurricane with the code-name Sandy, hit the North East US. Major states, including New York & New Jersey, were heavily impacted for many weeks afterwards. People lost their lives, their homes and businesses and until today thousands are still struggling to get back on their feet. What I will say through my article is the view of a tech-guy on the problems we faced on infrastructure, predictions, security and disaster recovery and common mistakes that even big businesses with branded supportcouldn't avoid.

Prepare for the worst - Hope for the best.

When it comes to prediction and preparedness for a natural catastrophe or a simple data-failure accident, the least you can expect from your I.T. guy is to protect your business’s and clients’ data. Nowadays there are hundreds of different roads that a sophisticated I.T. manager can follow. At the end of the day what counts is how many hours the business was down, and what data was lost or incapable of restoration.