Tag: risk taker

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How to reduce risk in a start-up?

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A long and lonely desert road in Namibia.

Some people define a “true” entrepreneur as someone who conceives, organises and leads a new, independent commercial venture at significant personal cost and risk – both financial and emotional. One entrepreneur doesn’t believe that an entrepreneur is someone who does only part of that set of jobs. He believes that someone who opens a new coffee shop or buys a car wash franchise while being a risk taker is not a complete entrepreneur. Why? Because he or she has not fully conceived organised the venture. If you dream up a business, he says, put it together, run it and depend on it financially, you are an entrepreneur. Continue reading “How to reduce risk in a start-up?”

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Only a fool would gamble their hard-earned cash

Horse racing event
Horse racing event (Photo credit: tpower1978)

At about 8:30 in the morning I walked past a man talking loudly on his cellphone. I was in the Boulders Shopping centre in Midrand, Johannesburg, coming out of Game department store where I had just bought an umbrella because the rainy season has started year on the Highveld.

The man was in his early fifties in a blue T-shirt, denim shorts and slip slops. He was standing with his cellphone glued to his ear. He looked across the giant boulders with tall aloes showing their candle-like red flowers growing in a rockery below, the centrepiece of the shopping centre. Continue reading “Only a fool would gamble their hard-earned cash”