Launching a Startup Business in the Agribusiness Market: The Process of becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

Last December 2017, Prof. Marisa del Pozo Lite (Complutense University of Madrid) was invited to give a session as member of the International Advisory Board of CEIBS-Africa to a group of 40 African Business Women in the Agribusiness Market – as part of the Alumni Reunion Agenda of CEIBS-Africa Program held at Harvard University in 2017. Getting a venture underway in the agribusiness market is often easier than keeping it going and growing. At each major stage from start-up to sustainable success, entrepreneurs face tough questions about shifting gears, making major changes, and letting go of people, partners, and products. For new businesses, inability or unwillingness to change can land them in the statistics about high failure rates at the five-year mark. For non-profits, clinging to the past can lead to marginality and stagnation. To keep an enterprise on track in the agribusiness market while facing the often-pleasant challenge of growth requires making sometimes-painful adjustments in these five areas: