New Ventures’ Objectives And Entrepreneurs’ Expectations. Evidence From Edp-Surveyed Companies

The existence of a dynamic and efficient entrepreneurial sector, the creation and development of new ventures are essentially nurtured by the ambitions and motivations of the founding entrepreneurs. However, the lack of experience, limited resources or the challenging adapting to a hostile and competitive environment are often in a bitter contradiction with the expectations and plans of the entrepreneur at the time of the company's launching. The undefined prolonging of the survival stage, instead of a rapid and prosperous growth, often results in frustrations and re-evaluations of the company's goals, or even the motivation of being in business. Although the economic and financial success is considered appropriate and useful to achieve other non-financial goals (as recognition, family life, community involvement etc.), several researches show that it is difficult to build a sufficiently clear picture of the relationship between companies' performance and goals in relation with the entrepreneurs’ expectation. In this paper, we used the results of a survey on a significant number of European new ventures' entrepreneurs, in order to address several issues regarding the main financial goals of entrepreneurs, the average profit margins considered satisfactory by new entrepreneurs, or if there is a specific of the firm’s performance objectives related to the business sector they function. We have also investigated the companies' life-specific goals or, more exactly, what are the goals of early-stage firms, i.e. the so-called new ventures.