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Every year there are more than two million would-be entrepreneurs in the UK trying to get businesses off the ground and 15 million in the United States. The majority of them fail. Of those who submit business plans to business angels or venture capitalists, fewer than 1 per cent will be successful. These observations form the backdrop to Mullins's book.
The majority of new ventures fail for opportunity-related reasons, he says. These include market reasons – the target market simply won’t buy; industry reasons, it’s too easy for competition to steal your customers and entrepreneurial team reasons; or the team lacks the set of skills needed to meet the various challenges that need to be met.
Through models and case studies, this well-structured book examines what entrepreneurs need to do to succeed. The economics of a business become sustainable when a company’s business model is sufficiently robust so as not to run out of cash, he notes.
This depends on whether revenue is adequate in relation to capital investment, and whether customer acquisition and retention costs, and the time it takes to get customers, are viable.
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