Sir Richard Harpin

It will get to economies of scale.

And of course, it didn't because it was the wrong business model.

The business got bigger and the losses went from 10,000 a month to 50,000 a month.

So my learning was...

stay small, bootstrap your business, test, learn, copy, pivot, and make sure you get the right business model.

When you have, then press the accelerate button.

And that might mean going and getting investment to really scale the business.

But don't do that until you've absolutely categorically proved your model.

I think it's a message from some people that says, oh, you've got to go big at all costs.

Venture capital in some periods have said, well, we'll give you loads of money to test and prove your business, but just go big and throw loads of money at it and eventually it will work.

And I think that's the wrong discipline.

Keep it small, prove it out, and then go big.

Jim Collins, in his book, Good to Great, would call it firing bullets, and then when you hit the target, then fire the cannonball.

If you fire the cannonball at the beginning, you run the risk of busting your business.

Yeah.

And I think that entrepreneurship is a high risk activity, right?

I don't know the numbers in the US where quite often Americans would say that failure is a stepping stone on the way to success.

It's frowned on here in the UK.

Therefore, I think you get more caution.

And there's two bits of advice that I would give to people that want to be entrepreneurs.