THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP LIFE CYCLE

I am very proud of my association with The Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at Western University's Ivey Business School as well as being Co-Chair of Western Entrepreneur, a cross faculty Entrepreneurship ecosystem at Western University.  Western's commitment to Entrepreneurship has produced a significant number of success stories and has become a go-to place for Entrepreneurship studies on a global scale.

We often think of Entrepreneurs as young people launching tech start-ups from a garage.  Or, what about young people shaping their dreams by launching their business in an incubator or accelerator community with a group of like minded people.  

But then there are people like me who wanted to gain valuable experience before taking the plunge.  After a 5 year banking career to learn what makes them say yes, 6 years as a CFO to negotiate and finance investment activity and 6 years as a CEO to take a satellite business public and grow it, I changed gears by giving myself 2 1/2 years to find a media business to buy.  I launched via acquisition but I started from scratch.

A friend of mine is the second generation owner of a very successful national retail chain.  He once said that he was not an Entrepreneur since his Dad was the Founder.  I disagreed.  He is an Owner-Leader like all other Entrepreneurs with everything on the line every day.

I am also very passionate about multi-generational Family Business.  I am determined to go this route in our family for many reasons which will be the subject of a future blog.  The point is that Entrepreneurs eventually reach a crossroad of exit vs transition.  Most people exit.  Why?  Because transitioning successfully is, in my view, more difficult than building the business in the first place.

The point of this preamble is to demonstrate that there is clearly an Entrepreneurship life cycle which at Ivey and Western we summarize as follows:

• Accumulating business and technical skills
• Start-up phase
• Development and growth stage
• Exit or transition to next generation
• Multi-generation family business

Every large business was once a start-up.  It got there by consolidating its category or by re-inventing itself as the market evolved.

But most start-ups launch, grow and then exit to a strategic player, a private equity firm or another form of buyout.

The scarcity is in the category of start-ups which have transitioned to become a multi-generation family business and which has grown to be a large company scaling internationally.  This is the category which I am most excited about.  Any country which produces these success stories develops a solid economic base.  The alternative is often becoming a branch-plant economy because of exits which eventually end up in the hands of foreign nationals. 

A country like Canada must understand every stage of the Entrepreneurship Life Cycle and develop strategies which lead to success at each stage of the cycle.  We need national success stories.  In fact, let's also enable our home-grown Entrepreneurs to buy back branch plants.