Richard Bran­son

Q: I'm from Pak­istan, where ven­ture cap­i­tal fund­ing is not yet read­i­ly avail­able. How can en­tre­pre­neurs here en­sure cash flow in a start­up's ear­ly days and pay salaries to em­ploy­ees? What are the top three build­ing blocks need­ed for en­tre­pre­neurs to trans­form a start­up in­to a sus­tain­able or­gan­i­sa­tion?

Ibra­heem Ah­mad

Af­ter see­ing so many tech star­tups rock­et to bil­lion-dol­lar buy­outs so quick­ly in the past few years, some new en­tre­pre­neurs might mis­tak­en­ly think that start­ing a busi­ness is an ex­plo­sive sprint that ends quick­ly. In re­al­i­ty, it's an en­durance race that on­ly a few sur­vive: Ac­cord­ing to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 com­pa­nies fail with­in 18 months of open­ing for busi­ness.

There is no hard and fast rule that dis­tin­guish­es the two busi­ness­es in 10 that sur­vive from those that fail: Busi­ness-threat­en­ing chal­lenges can pop up at any mo­ment, no mat­ter what you do. How­ev­er, one of the best ways to pro­tect your en­ter­prise is to make choic­es with the long term in mind.

Here are some tips on three ar­eas where your de­ci­sions will make a dif­fer­ence for years to come.

1. Choose your clients care­ful­ly

When you're launch­ing your start­up, it may some­times be tempt­ing to take or­ders or make deals that you can't af­ford to ful­fill in hopes of gain­ing clients. This is al­most al­ways a mis­take. If your busi­ness grows too fast, you'll like­ly end up pro­duc­ing an in­fe­ri­or prod­uct or ser­vice and dis­ap­point­ing those cus­tomers; and if you're un­lucky, the en­tire en­ter­prise will then fall flat.