Capex is not the number. Working capital is.

Almost every plan we see is funded to open and not funded to survive. The months between opening and break-even are where businesses die, and nobody budgets them.

Ask someone what a business costs and they will tell you the fit-out. Ask what killed the last one they closed and they will tell you a month — usually somewhere between the eighth and the fourteenth.

The gap between opening and break-even has a shape, and it is always longer than the plan. Self-storage fills over eighteen months. A clinic inherits a patient list that shrinks before it grows. A padel club is empty on weekday mornings for a year.

The rule we apply to every field

Take the monthly fixed cost, multiply it by the honest months to break-even, and halve it — because revenue ramps rather than switching on. That is the working capital line, and in most of the fields we have researched it is 25–40% of the fit-out, which means it is 25–40% of the number everyone quotes and nobody funds.

• Self-storage — 18 months to break-even, €31k of working capital on a €164k fit-out
• Padel — 14 months, €48k on €372k
• Clinic bought, not built — 0 months in theory, and 12 in practice once the list starts leaving

This is also why the payback figure in our atlas row is measured from the fit-out, not from break-even. Measured the flattering way, everything looks like a two-year payback. Measured honestly, half of it does not.