Let’s sustain start-up businesses — Rev. Saakuur-Karbo

About 70 per cent of start-ups collapsed within the first three years of operations, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Empowerment Coaching and Consulting Services, Rev. Augustine Saakuur-Karbo, has revealed.

He said the startling revelations were discovered in a research he carried out early last year by his outfit.

He said having gone into 12 of such start-ups including bicycle rentals, space-to-space business, micro credit, car rentals and food stuff provisions with all failing, he was passionate about changing the narrative.

In view of that he said he had embarked on an initiative dubbed Start Strong Ghana, to provide practical solutions to deal with the high failure rate of start-ups not only in the country but across the continent.

Interaction

Rev. Saakuur-Karbo told a session of the media last Monday that the research was extended to Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, with all showing the same results – disturbing statistics of high failure rate.

Thus, he said the objective of Start Strong Ghana, which would commence later this month on pilot basis, was to change the narrative from failure rate to a success rate.

“The drive is to change the narrative from a failure rate to a success rate,” he said, adding that “this pilot has come at such a time to help start-up businesses, small to medium enterprises and professionals transitioning into entrepreneurship.

Rev. Saakuur-Karbo said that was to get the mindset, structure and methods on how to start a business, run it in a professional way and get results by not just focusing on profits but on impact as well.

The research, he said, revealed that most start-ups focused on profits, did not pay attention to critical business structure or system and business module and that successful businesses operated on a structured and well-organised system.

Research

“One of the things is that they don’t even do basic research to find out whether there is a problem-solution fit and a product or service-market fit before they start,” he said.

Aside from that, he said operators of the start-ups did not have the practical business acumen in terms of discipline, focus and long-term ideas of their businesses, and that “if you start without a vision, the idea is that you are looking for short-term results which could not take you through the long haul”.

“What this means is that you start to fail from the word go,” he said.

Other reasons, he said, which led to the collapse of start-ups included the lack of a strategic vision, strategy, structure as well as mentoring and coaching.

Acumen

“Getting business acumen comes at a cost and most start-up businesses are unable to afford that and get the foundation right before progressing from there and that is a root cause of why most start-up businesses fail,” he said.

Rev. Saakuur-Karbo said after the piloting of the Start Strong Ghana which would last for four weeks, those who registered would be mentored for three months at no cost.

He said if the piloting became successful, it would be scaled to the national level across the 16 regions and then subsequently go to the West African sub-region in Nigeria through to Kenya and South Africa.

“Start Strong Ghana is to provide mentorship, practical knowledge in terms of mindset shift, clarity in business and building their confidence,” he said.

“The four-week training”, he said, “would be purely online, two hours per session”.

He charged start-up businesses to endeavour to undertake due diligence before commencing their operations.