“The businesses that have the biggest chance of survival are the ones that people really, really care about,” says Deborah Meaden. “Caring comes from passion and seeing people’s passion is one of the fundamental reasons I invest. However, passion alone doesn’t make it a success.
You have to move from the sheer passion into the slightly more hard-nosed research bit that says: ‘Actually, I might love this, but are there enough other people out there who would love this as much as me to make this into an actual business?’”
“Ask yourself whether there is a clear market pull for what your business delivers,” adds Sam Jackman, founder of Boost Innovations, who designed a prosthetic breast for those who have had a mastectomy.
“For my brand, I spent a long time talking to women to establish whether there was a gap in the market. This meant that jumping into the stress and the costs of product development was a bit easier because we had done the research first.”
