Start-ups abound, but not all of them have the staying power. The Small Business Association says that “only half of new businesses will survive the first five years and only a third will make it past 10.”
An example is Virgin Brides, which was launched in 1990 and catered to wedding services, but it eventually closed because the operational costs did not match the market demand. Sir Richard Branson, Britain’s seventh richest billionaire and founder of the Virgin Group, says in a Virgin blog post, “Those start-ups were founded by passionate leaders and offered interesting products and services. What some of them lacked, unfortunately, was the ability to survive and thrive over the long term.”
