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What start-ups can learn from the Tour de France

One of my favourite podcasts is Radio 5’s Sportsweek. It’s broadcast at 9am on Sunday just as I’m walking the dog so I usually listen to it across the week before work. Garry Richardson is a bit Marmite – he is always quite obviously digging for an angle, which grates with me, but at the same time, the show is excellent and he always seems to have exactly the right guests.

This week, he had the head of Team Sky – the pro cycling outfit that won the last two tours with Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome (though no such luck this year). Sky have been amazing and Sir Dave Brailsford is clearly quite a leader. I was struck by his ethos for success and it rang true with me regarding life for anyone building a start-up. When asked how he felt about the need to change tactics when his main rider crashed out of the race, he answered simply with the tenacity of someone who knows that the path to success is never direct and is always hard work:

We start off with the basics that the goalposts will move and that life’s not fair