How much are you willing to risk? That is the ultimate question any would-be entrepreneurs must ask themselves. Before you embark on a start-up, think hard if you really possess the resolution and sheer desire to make it happen. For in life, the price of glory is never cheap and in this particular arena, it is probably too high for many. After all, when you go for broke in business, it isn’t just a metaphor: it could well be the reality.

You cannot simply measure the risk of a new venture in terms of your own money. Usually, if a scheme falls apart, then the founders are likely to lose the cash they invested. Almost invariably, theirs’ is the first to take the hit. But in addition they may well have lost money from backers among their friends and family; perhaps suppliers and the bank are out of pocket, too. There will be staff made redundant – and probably a landlord with a vacant building. That is a fair amount of collateral damage. And these are just the financial drawbacks.

As James Dyson, owner of the world-beating household appliance business, has said: “I spent five or six years developing a completely different kind of vacuum cleaner. I built over 5,000 prototypes to get the system to work. Every year I was getting further and further into debt. In the end I owed something like $4m. I took out two or three mortgages on my house. If I failed, everything I owned would have gone to the bank. Everybody thought I was completely mad.”