Even the best entrepreneurs get it wrong from time to time, and no-one goes through their business career without making a decision they one day rue.
To demonstrate this inalienable truth, and provide some inspiration for our readers, we asked five of Britain’s most successful start-up entrepreneurs to tell us about the decision, or non-decision, they regret the most. Any start-up entrepreneur, in any field, should be able to relate to what they told us.
Don’t wait to start up
Paul Aitken set up Borro.com, a financial institution specialising in the sports and entertainment fields, in August 2008. The company now encompasses 45 employees, with a turnover of between £4 and £5m, and has plans in place for international expansion.
Borro is not Aitken’s first start-up; before founding the company he created a mobile phone connectivity company, and made a successful exit in 2005. But despite this rich entrepreneurial pedigree, Aitken wishes he’d chased his start-up dream even sooner.
“My view is that I should have taken the plunge of starting my own companies earlier than I did. Part of the reason was not having enough confidence to back myself. Likewise, at the time I was looking at doing start-ups in the early 90s, there was far less capital for start-ups than there is now.
“I had lots of ideas – in 1999, for example, I had everything fleshed out for a precursor to Facebook, but I never got it off the ground. I spent too much time planning and not enough time doing.
“I learned that, if you’ve got a good idea, you should back your judgement and go for it.”
Borrow as much as you can
Former glamour model Nikki Hesford decided to start her own business after graduating from university and experiencing frustration in the job market. Her company, Miss Fit UK, specialises in providing clothing for big busted women, and now boasts an annual turnover of around £350,000.
When Nikki started in 2008, she believes she should have taken greater risks early on.
“In the beginning, being a typical woman I just put a few thousand in here and there, and it took a good 18 months to get off the ground, largely because of me being risk-averse. With hindsight, rather than spending £1,000 a time on a credit card, I should have got £30,000 through a business loan. But the applications were so long and the banks were quite patronising – it was like ‘go home, Barbie doll’.”