How to start and how to manage your own business?

ChemHolz GmbH 4 When you plan to study a young start-up company you will unavoidably face problems in gathering the information needed in order to do a good job. Beside other hinders the two main reasons for this problem may be the fear of the entrepreneur that important facts of his business are revealed and the lack of an appropriate database within these young companies. The members of our group soon agreed that the best way to deal with this difficulty is to choose a company from which we know the entrepreneur very well. Regarding some other criteria, like prospects of the company and the underlying business idea, we finally chose a two-years-old Austrian start-up named “ChemHolz”, to be the subject of our investigation. In the following parts of our work, we will first introduce the company in a rather detailed way and unfold its history. Then, we will examine its resources, capabilities and operations. In the third part of the work we will take a close look at the entrepreneur, Hans Wagenhofer. And last but not least, we will review the company’s strategy and give our final conclusion. Our main objective throughout the whole work will be to relate our particular findings with current entrepreneurial theory. 1. History of the company While we tell the history of the company the reader may have the “Milestone Planning Approach” in mind, as the incorporation process of ChemHolz fits although not deliberately applied surprisingly well with the given Milestones. Although ChemHolz’s business idea is not a novel idea 1 , it is worth to have a look at the origin of the idea, as the prior knowledge of Hans Wagenhofer about the market was very important for the identification of the opportunity. 1 Bhide, Amar V., 2000, “The origin and evolution of new business”, p.32, figure 1.2