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“Research is something that a lot of people forget about. You wouldn’t believe how many people think they have a great product and they’re just going to take it to market. I was recently speaking to a group of entrepreneurs and only 10pc of them had done any research into what was going on in their marketplace in the past year. This trend hasn’t changed in the past five years. I have seen so many businesses that haven’t done proper effective research and have ended up not being viable as a result.”

Know your audience

One of the first things you need to do if you have a business idea is think about who you’re audience is going to be.

“To be cost effective you need to hone in if possible to a group of people and put some resources into this,” explains De.

Research methods

There are various ways of finding out if your product or service will sell to this group. She cites the example of Innocent Smoothies, whose founders invested £500 sterling to give out samples at a music festival. “They asked whether people liked it and had a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ bin and a sign saying ‘Should we give up our jobs and make these smoothies?’”

You could use an independent research company to do a survey for you, but be careful that it approaches the right people, ie the decision-makers with the power to invest or buy.

Time and money

“Good research is about knowing the right questions to ask. Informational interviews you do yourself are very helpful and can save you a lot of time and money. You can also carry out your own surveys on the web using online research tools, which typically cost around US$20 a month to hire.”

Research doesn’t have to take months either. As De explains: “It depends what you have at stake. If you’re setting up a pizza place for example, you could stand outside a similar outlet for a day and look at the amount of traffic going in and out and estimate sales for a comparable location.”