‘A great black book’: how to exploit contacts for global success
An eye for opportunity and an appetite for risk puts serial entrepreneurs at an advantage in new markets, what can their approach teach first-time founders?
Mark Hart , Deputy Director , ERC contributed to an article published by the Guardian Online. “Serial entrepreneurs’ networks help them to sustain businesses across countries and sectors. They would have taken their network from each venture into the next one. They’ve got a great black book, they don’t have to rely on [knowing the] culture or language or using embassies [to take their enterprise across borders]. They exploit their contacts.”
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), which runs an annual UK survey, habitual entrepreneurs (those who have started more than one business) are more likely than one-time founders to be making over 25% of their turnover outside the UK (39% of serial entrepreneurs were making this proportion of their sales overseas, compared to 16% of one-time founders)