How to do a SWOT analysis of a startup

Starting a company is one of the boldest moves you can make, but unfortunately, no one hands you a ready-made toolbox for handling the uncertainty that comes with it. Things like product viability, the company’s trajectory, and the role itself are likely still moving targets. So, most folks run a SWOT analysis of startups to figure out where the company stands early on and what moves to make next for growth.

What is a SWOT analysis and why it matters for startups

A SWOT analysis is a tool to help you evaluate your startup’s competitive position so you can build a game plan around its strengths and growth opportunities. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 

Developed at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, SWOT analysis has been used in corporate planning for decades. For startups, it’s especially useful because your business model is still evolving, and A SWOT can highlight what’s working and what isn’t. That way, you can approach business planning with a clear head, without overemphasizing strengths and opportunities or getting bogged down by weaknesses and threats. 

Large companies often rely on past performance to make decisions, but startup founders can rely on a SWOT analysis as a structure when everything else feels fluid. Without historical data or complex models, SWOT lets you identify strengths and flag weak spots so you can make more confident decisions.

How to conduct a SWOT analysis for your startup

Here’s how to run a startup SWOT analysis, step by step, to organize your thinking and guide your next strategic move:

Step 1: Assemble the right team for brainstorming

To thoroughly evaluate your startup, bring together a mix of founders and key team members who understand the business from different angles. Team brainstorming surfaces insights you might otherwise miss on your own.

Step 2: Gather data

With your team, explore the primary areas of your business and do a big brain dump to gather the hard numbers and the day-to-day insights across your startup’s operations. Use those insights to gain a clear understanding of how your business runs internally functions and how external factors shape where it’s heading.

Step 3: Brainstorm each SWOT category

Use a SWOT analysis template to map ideas under four categories:

• Strengths: Internal capabilities that give your startup an advantage over the competition 
• Weaknesses: Internal gaps that limit progress or create roadblocks
• Opportunities: External market or environmental areas you could capitalize on
• Threats: External risks that could disrupt your progress or threaten your startup’s future

Step 4: Prioritize what matters

Not everything in your SWOT list is equally important. Highlight the items with the greatest impact on your short- and long-term startup strategy. Prioritize them by what you can act on now, what needs monitoring, and what might require additional resources later.

Step 5: Turn insights into action

Use the SWOT to inform real decisions. It’s not a one-and-done document; revisit it regularly as things change. A startup’s strengths and weaknesses are internal factors you can control or improve, while opportunities and threats come from external market conditions, which you should prepare for.

Common mistakes when doing SWOT analysis of startups

As with all tools, the fault in SWOT often lies with how people use it. Here are some common mistakes to watch out for:

• Being too vague in each category: Makes your analysis hard to act on and leads to generic, surface-level insights
• Overloading strengths: Creates a false sense of confidence and overshadows real weaknesses
• Ignoring threats: Prevents early risk mitigation and leaves your startup vulnerable to avoidable issues
• Doing it solo: Limits perspective and often misses blind spots that only a team discussion can uncover

But what exactly goes into each part of SWOT?

Strengths: What gives your startup an edge

Your SWOT analysis starts by considering all your strengths, the things that set your startup apart and help you compete. They can be tangible, like proprietary tech or intellectual property, or intangible, like a sharp founding team or lightning-fast execution. 

Both tangible and intangible strengths matter. To identify and quantify them, look at what’s hard for competitors to replicate. Do customers consistently praise a specific aspect of your business? Are you solving problems competitors overlook? If possible, use data to validate your strengths and turn them into strategic advantages. Airbnb’s early focus on design and hands-on execution shows how leaning into your startup’s strengths can give you a real advantage even in crowded markets.

Weaknesses: Understanding your startup’s vulnerabilities

Every startup has limitations that can hold it back: resource gaps, inexperience, limited market presence, or operational inefficiencies. Spotting these early helps you manage risk and make smarter decisions. Most common startup weaknesses aren’t fatal, but they are real.

A clear understanding of where you’re falling short makes it easier to course-correct. So don’t sugarcoat your weaknesses. Be honest and specific. Then, look for ways to reduce the impact or close your vulnerability gaps. 

Some practical strategies to remedy your startup weaknesses include

• Outsourcing what you’re not good at
• Strengthening your team’s capabilities to close skill gaps
• Narrowing your focus to avoid spreading too thin
• Delaying non-essential features or hires to stay lean
• Building partnerships to compensate for internal limitations

Opportunities: Spotting startup growth potential

Opportunities are factors you can tap into to fuel growth. From emerging technologies and shifts in customer behaviors to untapped markets and strategic partnerships, identifying opportunities early helps you focus your efforts where the market is moving.

To spot opportunities, look at trends that match your mission and capabilities. Zoom, for example, capitalized on the remote work surge with a video platform that meets urgent needs, and that’s how it scaled so quickly. Notion rode the productivity wave by combining docs, task lists, calendars, wikis, and databases into a flexible tool people already needed. These startups didn’t invent demand. Instead, they recognized it early.

Before acting on an opportunity, make sure it fits your vision. The wrong opportunity might bring growth, but not the kind you can sustain.

Threats: External factors that could impact your startup

The final process of your SWOT analysis is to review threats to your startup. Look at the external forces that could affect your startup’s growth and stability:

• Regulatory risks
• Economic downturns
• Competitive pressure
• Shifting customer preferences
• Supply chain issues

You can’t control external factors, but you can prepare for them. Watch for anything in your environment that could disrupt your startup’s strategy. Then, based on likelihood and impact, prioritize the threats that need immediate action and monitor the rest. Planning for worst-case scenarios will make your strategy resilient.

Simplify SWOT analysis of startups with Jotform

A SWOT analysis provides a powerful foundation for brainstorming sessions aimed at developing a startup strategy. Instead of collecting scattered thoughts in emails or docs, Jotform brings you team’s input into one place so you can streamline efforts and get actionable insights faster.Create a custom SWOT form to gather strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats across your team. All the responses will be stored in one place, and you can visualize or export them instantly. You can also reuse strategic plan templates across product lines or planning cycles to keep your evaluations consistent. Contact us today to learn how Jotform can help you plan for growth with a clear startup SWOT analysis.