Do you aspire to be an entrepreneur? Do you have an idea but didn’t know if it will work out? Recently, I have borrowed a few books about entrepreneurship from the National Library. I hope to learn what are the challenges and how others embark on the path of entrepreneurship.
This book is about how 30 good ideas became great businesses. Two excellent points I learnt from the book:
#1 A significant minority of the founders started the business as a part time activity while they carried on with their day jobs t find their living expenses, focusing full time on their own business when it had shown enough potential to make them take that leap.
#2 Eighteen hours are pretty common.
The case studies in the book can be broken down into a few categories: Food and Drink, Retail, Restaurants and Leisure, Internet, Manufacturing, Media, Technology and Services. Have you heard or used Bebo? I have. It used to be in the same era as MySpace.
Food and Drink
- Gu Chocolate Puds
- Innocent Drinks
- Cobra Beer
- The Black Farmer
- The Fabulous Bakin Boys
- S&A Foods
Retail
- Dreams
- Cotton Traders
- Glasses Direct
- One Small Step One Giant Leap
- Jojo Maman Bebe
- Bravissimo
Restaurants and Leisure
- Hotel Du Vin
- PizzaExpress
- The Cinnamon Club
Internet
- Bebo
- Moneysupermarket.com
- Friends Reunited
Manufacturing
- Dyson
- Vitabiotics
Media
- Codemasters
- Dorling Kindersley
- Extreme Group
Technology
- MeetingZone
- Sage
- Psion Teklogix
Services
- Hargreaves Lansdown
- Jigsaw Research
- Pimlico Plumbers
- The SG Group
A good read, however personally feel it lacks content as compared with How 25 Good Ideas Became Great Companies. I give the book a below average rating 2 out of 5 stars.
