The Start-Up Entrepreneur

About the Book

The Start-Up Entrepreneur: An Emerging Market Experience is a book about the adventures of a man setting up and running small businesses in Nigeria. It is mostly a personal story that teaches about precepts that are essential for starting and running small businesses in Nigeria as an example of an emerging market. It shares ideas on coming to a decision about transiting from paid employment to entrepreneurship, the timing of such decision, and the business to go into. It discusses the challenges of raising money for new businesses and where to look for financing. It advises on the kind of financing and the kind of people to avoid at the nascent stage of the business. The book discusses the peculiar challenges of running a business in Nigeria. It gives hints on how to handle predatory and corrupt tax officials and regulatory agencies that are inept and how to operate in a regime with very unstable government policies. It advises on how to build a business for success in a chaotic environment and, should failure become inevitable, how to extract maximum value for the owners of the business. The book draws on the personal experience of the author but also advises on business principles that apply and how to deftly combine street wisdom and textbook precepts. It ends with an advice to the government on what it can do to enable small businesses. Every aspiring entrepreneur and those struggling with the management of small businesses will benefit from this book.

About the Author

Sola Solarin is a trained pharmacist with an MBA from the prestigious International Graduate School of Management (IESE) of the University of Navarra in Barcelona, Spain. He started his career in business management in the Nigerian subsidiary of the multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoWellcome Nigeria Limited in different functional specialties, including sales, marketing, product development, procurement, logistics, and engineering project management. He did a stint as the chief executive officer of a health maintenance organization before leading a team to acquire a pharmaceutical manufacturing company. He has also managed a financial services company and presently runs a consultancy with focus on pharmaceutical regulatory affairs, quality certification, and environmental services consulting. He is also actively involved presently in the setting up of an aviation advisory business.