Similarities between businesspeople and sportspeople

What advice should you give to an entrepreneur if they ask you for one single lesson? For many, the answer may be about raising money, about surrounding yourself with the right people, or about finding product-market fit. For Nicole Junkermann, the international investor and founder of venture capital company NJF Capital, the answer is much more simple. “Trial and error, trial and error, trial and error,” says Nicole. “One thing is certain for all entrepreneurs, at some point you are going to fail, and the key to success is the ability to learn from these failures, adapt quickly, and move forward.”

Investing in the sports industry through Winamax, the sports gaming platform she founded in 1998 at the beginning of the dot-com boom, and through Infront Sports & Media, helping build the company into one of the world’s top sports and media rights businesses, Nicole says that she sees the same essential qualities in successful businesspeople and athletes: “perseverance, competitiveness, and a determination to always strive to do better.  These are essential attitudes to have when starting out as an entrepreneur.”

“From the outside,” she adds, “many think that success is down to luck, but for me the saying that holds true is this: ‘the harder I work, the luckier I am’.”