Enterprise Is Better The First Time Around

If at first you don't succeed, you're probably not on the INC. 500.

 

It may take practice, practice, practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but the old adage does not seem to apply to business start-ups. Two out of every three founders of America's fastest-growing companies have hit the big time on the first try. Statistically speaking, these winners make it look easy. But don't be fooled: this is a survey that tilts toward winners.

There were some practiced start-up artists in our survey, however. The typical veteran had founded two other companies before the present one -- one failure and one success. And a few veterans were fownright prolific.

At the age of 26, Tom Duck Sr. of Tucson opened his own appliance store in Indianapolis, down the street from his old employer, Sears Roebuck & Co. "I was buying my stoves from the same place that Sears was -- but I was giving better prices," remembers Duck. After that venture it was toys and garish paintings, several types of insurance, auto-seat repairs, and a family motor coach association -- none of them failures but none a spectacular success, either. Now, at 72 and on his thirteenth company, Duck finally seems to have made a score: a chain of 500 low-cost car-rental franchises, run mostly out of used-car dealerships in 41 states and Canada. "The whole thing is very inspiring and awesome," he says of his latest endeavor.

Actually, Duck was only number two in our survey in the category of most start-up experience. Richard S. Thorp, a retailer and distributor of electronics equipment, in Kent, Wash., claims that he has started 24 businesses during his career. We never found out from Thorp how he did it and how many of those companies have survived. Not surprisingly, he is too busy to chat.