Page 72 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success
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CHAPTER THREE
Founder Readiness
How to Prepare for the
Entrepreneurial Journey
“It’s not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win, that makes
the difference.”
—Paul “Bear” Bryant, legendary college football coach
As Scott Shane notes in his book, The Illusions of Entrepreneurship, most
new businesses fail. “Pretty much all studies agree on that,” he writes.
“The only question is how long it takes for a majority of them to go
out of business (and why).” Startup failure rates are consistent across
different types of companies, across different parts of the world, and
across decades. Even investor-backed startups, presumably led by tal-
ented founders with better-than-average ideas, fall short at remark-
ably high rates. “In short, no matter how you measure new firms and
no matter which developed country you look at,” says Shane, “it ap-
pears that only half of new firms started remain in business for five
years, and less than one-third last ten years.”1
More troubling—and telling—is the state of entrepreneurship
among ventures that survive. Only one-third of all owner-operated
American Management Association • www.amanet.org
