This is a true story about how a business angel could have helped my friend. She was on track to become a self-made millionaire, but after 3 years she declared bankruptcy and gave up. To protect her identity, I've changed her name and left out parts of the invention.
Sarah was nice, but she was a little bossy and competitive. I met her on an access course. When we were talking about going to college, she asked me what I planned to do and what she thought would make her the most money. I wanted to study computer science and said that CAD (computer-aided design) would probably make the most money. In the end, I got pregnant, and my partner and I decided to start our own business from home. The Princes Trust gave us a loan to get us started. My friend went to college, and I didn't hear from her again until she was about to graduate three years later.
When I turned on the local news, the main story was about my old friend Sarah. People thought that because of her final year dissertation, she would become a self-made millionaire. She put her money into a product that experts said would sell all over the world and make her rich. She had won a lot of awards and been asked to be on a lot of TV shows, like This Morning and Living Genius. There was a lot of buzz about her and this new product, and investors were coming to her from everywhere. The university did everything they could to help their top student and told her what to do next.
Around that time, my relationship had broken down, and my partner had left me for a cleaner and taken the business with him, leaving me as a single parent living on welfare. I tried to get a job, but my local job centre told me that I would be worse off if I worked, even though I was more qualified than the woman who interviewed me. This made me want to go to college.
After my first year of college, I saw my friend on TV and thought I should get in touch with her because she seemed to be doing so well, which made me happy. She worked hard, so it's clear that she deserved all this attention and the things that came with it. I got in touch with her again through a friend we both knew, and I went to her new place of business to see her. She was sitting at a desk with all of her awards and certificates on the wall behind her. She looked like the cat who got the cream, and who could blame her? I guess I was a little jealous, but I thought she was getting too big for her boots because all she talked about was herself. I thought the building was too big for a business that was just getting started. She was renting out some of the space because it was so big and expensive. I remember thinking at the time that this won't work because she had stupid ideas and wasn't good at business. Her husband didn't seem to know anything and didn't help much.
She was talking about a global company that wanted to buy her product and sell it through their stores around the world, but they wanted to change the material and use their name and packaging. Sarah, on the other hand, wanted to sell her product in a box and packaging that she made herself. She also wanted to sell to small stores around the county and give them a chance. Big mistake! Everyone said that company would make her a millionaire, and it would have. If I were her investor, business partner, or advisor, I would have taken her up on that offer right away. I liked the idea behind the product, but I also thought it would sell better if it were made of a different material. I didn't want to tell her that because it was her baby and she would have argued about it.
She kept going for another year or so, but nothing really took off. She was losing, and she wasn't making any of the millions of dollars she thought she would. After another year, she just gave up. The buzz about her and her invention died down, leaving her feeling stressed and like a failure.
So, the lesson of this story is that having a good idea and working hard aren't enough to make a business successful. I think she would be a millionaire if she had been given good, firm advice and ignored all the hype and press about her. Her idea was good, but it needed some changes to make it a worldwide hit. She should have taken the advice of experts and seen her invention as a business, not as her precious baby. She lost out when she turned down a big contract with a big global company. But I think she could have done very well if she had the right help.
