Risk entrepreneurship, or regret it?
We live in a new world of entrepreneurs as the ultimate innovators. Everything is now streamed to your pocket with a wave of technology-enabled by household names such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Starting a company is a glamorous and successful way to live your working life, isn’t it?
The reality is somewhat different. Statistics tell us fewer than half of all startups survive beyond five years. Fewer than half. In 5 years. This makes starting a business risky — terrifyingly, carelessly risky. In fact, you’d have to be crazy to take the leap and voluntarily start your own business, right?
After all, entrepreneurship is a venture reserved for the brave, the whimsical, the gamblers, willing to risk it all at the cost of bankruptcy, failure and unemployment.
But, aren’t these similar to the risks involved in your in day-to-day traditional employment? Isn’t there risk involved in trusting your day job to survive economic twists and turns or that your job will always be yours? Not to mention, if that job isn’t providing fulfilment.
So is the risk of entrepreneurship exaggerated? And if not, is it worth it?
I spoke to three Propel 2020 founders willing to take the risk on entrepreneurship for better or worse.
- Caroline Wilson, co-founder of Fooday, self-guided food and drink tours that can be taken by phone or by guide.
- Sarah Scullion, founder of Integra, making it easier to get to the world’s best events.
- Laura Vergara, co-founder of Netminds, building better relationships between business and universities.
Risk = Challenge Accepted.
Caroline Wilson, co-founder of Fooday, spent 13 years working as a solicitor before taking the leap and launching Taste and Tour in 2013.
“I realised there was a Groundhog Day thing going on. I was more interested in the business of law rather than the practice of it. I could see that business improvement was really my thing, plus running teams. So in 2013, I wrote down everything that I enjoyed or felt I was good at and left it in my car door.”
While she worked on making those things a reality, Caroline went on her first food tour during a trip to Venice and the concept of Taste and Tour — and what would later evolve into Fooday — was born.
“I started the Belfast food tour then. I decided to throw myself into it every Saturday with five food stops and invited about 20 people to come with me. I now know that was my MVP. Six months later, after I’d been doing the tours every Saturday, everyone said there was no way that anyone else could do this and that everyone was coming because of my personality. I thought, challenge accepted.”
From there Caroline decided to train up two friends to run the tours with her and a few years later, was handing in her notice, ready to go all-in with her business.
“My boss said don’t jump, take a career break instead. I still handed in my notice.”
For Laura Vergara, co-founder of Netminds, the pull of entrepreneurship outweighed the risk from the beginning.
“I did my Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship. I knew I wanted to start my own business but I didn’t know what the business would be.”
After university, spending time working in an advertising agency, re-inforced Laura’s ambitions to start her own business.
“There’s a lot of politics plus long hours, working late up until 3am sometimes. It was horrible. So I thought if I know I can put this much energy into something and I have the capabilities and ideas, of course, I’m going to try and do something myself. I’m young. There are so many possibilities. If I started working for someone else now, perhaps I’d be scared about having money and then not having it. I knew I needed to go now, do something about it, get new ideas, learn about entrepreneurship and try and do something myself. My mum kept telling me that my visa would expire soon and I’d have no money but I told her I wanted to make this happen. I want to try.”
Focusing on the necessity of maternity pay, Sarah Scullion, founder of Integra, kept putting off self-employment until having a baby, despite having always felt the pull into the entrepreneurial world. When that didn’t happen for a while, she decided to bite the bullet. Almost immediately she found her ability to handle risk pushed to new limits when days after registering her business, she found out she was finally pregnant.
“I continued in employment through to just before I had her while working on Integra on the side. I had Lucia in July 2018 and then started back to work in November 2019, got my grant in 2019 and got the software developed as a prototype.”
Relationship to Risk
“I’m definitely not risk-averse but obviously, I know there is risk attached. When you look at the opportunity cost of the freelance work I could be doing and the time I’m spending on this, I’m losing money all of the time at this stage but I see there’s so much potential to gain from it being a success. I believe it will be,” Sarah explains.
In Caroline’s experience, her relationship with risk varies and is often balanced with her co-founder. “I think I’m more risk-averse in comparison to Phil, my co-founder. I’m probably a bit more serious when it comes to money but have a greater appetite for risk when it comes to ideas. I didn’t take investment. This was all bootstrapped and it generated income from the beginning. It was up to me and there’s definitely something about that spurs you into action.”
Is it worth the risk?
Instead of living fearfully, risk is something that these founders have embraced. A sprinkling of perspective always helps too.
Laura argues, “I just want to have a roof over my head, enough money in my bank account to pay for my life and still have a quality of life. But apart from that, I’ve got nothing to lose, you know? The worst that will happen is that I’ll have to go back home — which hopefully won’t happen — and then I’ll get another job.”
For Sarah, “All I kept thinking was, if I’m 90 and someone else has done this, the risk is that I hadn’t tried hard enough. I believe that you will never regret something you tried but you regret the things you didn’t try. For me, as long as I know I gave it everything, I won’t regret it. If it fails, I won’t regret it but I’ll regret not giving it everything. I didn’t want to not give this a shot when I believe so firmly in it.”
Risk is synonymous with the concept of entrepreneurship but risks exist everywhere in life. The reason that entrepreneurs accept potentially higher levels of risk comes down to their vision of profound fulfilment, opportunity to lead, desire to ignite bold dreams, to create jobs and to enhance the lives of others.
As Caroline articulates so clearly, “The biggest risk is wishing you’d done it sooner.”
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