The media will have you believe that all successful entrepreneurs are high school drop outs. None of them ever went to university because they weren’t academic. Instead they possessed some intangible sort of “street savvy” that you cannot learn, but have to be born with. They all started out very young selling sweets to other kids at school and were probably dislexic.

Doug Richard finished high school, went to university and never did anything entrepreneurial until his mid 20s. He was seriously disadvantaged, he jokes. And yet, despite all the odds being against him, he still managed to create a software company and sell it to IBM several years later for £710 million.

Doug Richard, former star of BBC’s Dragons’ Den, while plugging his School For Startups, spoke like Dr House on business, about where his ideas come from, his biggest mistakes and how to know if your business idea has what it takes to make you millions. Read the rest of this entry »