Stages of Business Development When we are born we’re call an infant, as we grow from infancy we grow into childhood, from childhood we grow into adolescence, and from adolescence we grow into adulthood. In the same way we grow and develop through the different stages of life so does a business. Every business undergoes a life cycle that is referred to as stages of business development. Hisrich et al., describes the three major stages of business development funding as: the early stage financing, the expansion or development financing, and the acquisition and leveraged buyout financing (Hisrich et al. 2010). Under each major stage there is a smaller stage that a business goes through. Although, there are others such as Churchill & Lewis who claim that there are five stages in which a business moves through; these stages are: existence, survival, success, take-off, and resource maturity (Churchill & Lewis, 1983). This paper is intended to compare and contrast the two authors on stages of business development and revealing the outcome of an entrepreneur’s unsuccessful fate with one company.
The Early Stage Financing: Through each stage the business will grow and develop if the entrepreneur uses good decision making strategies, proper planning, financial funding, and hard work. In the early stage Hisrich et al. refers to this stage as the time when entrepreneurs will find that it is the most difficult because they will need seed capital and start-up capital funding to be obtained through outside funds. The seed capital is described as the small amount of funds needed to prove concepts and feasibility studies, while the start-up capital is used toward product development and the initial marketing, in other words getting the company started. It is also during this time that Hisrich et al. states that angel investors are most active (Hisrich et al. 2010). Whereas,