Cotrugli provides advice for merchants in 15th century Venice in 3 sentences: Merchants should pursue technical knowledge and balance risk, avoiding excessive transactions, carefully considering debt repayment periods, and ensuring succession through apprenticeships. They should also pursue honor, prudence, and generosity toward the poor through charity, avoiding excessive involvement in politics or courts, and retire at 50 having achieved financial security and a family in the trade.

1. How to Succeed in
Business
(According to a 15th
Century Trade Merchant)

2. Written in 1458 in Venice by trade merchant Benedetto Cotrugli
Born into a family of cloth and wool traders, Cotrugli was a
reluctant merchant, pulled from his studies at the University of
Bologna to join the family business in Dubrovnik that he
considered lacking in intellectual and moral discipline:
“I found the state of general education inadequate, ill-organised,
arbitrary and useless, It pained me that this useful and necessary
activity [trade] had fallen into the hands of such undisciplined and
uncouth people, who carry on without moderation or orderliness,
ignoring and perverting the law, and that this profession should be
considered of so little importance and be so neglected by the
wise...a forum for empty chatter where anything goes.”

3. Lot of work and little play makes Jack a good trader
avoid (chess, board games, cards, dice, fencing, wrestling,
playing instruments, dancing, hunting, fishing)
importance of attending mass, praying, and charity to
others: “The merchant must be generous in extending his
hand to the poor and in giving alms out of his own
property in proportion to its extent.”
Merchants should not be involved in politics, or the
courts, “because these are perilous areas”
Honor, prudence, integrity, diligence, civility, composure,
and temperance, importance of luck and boldness
“universal man, equipped with the capacity to understand
and deal with all types of men.”
“The shrewdness of the merchant, or his
cunning, must be employed in moderation:
he should neither hurt others nor allow
himself to be got the better of, but manage
to intuit where deceit and falsity lurk.”

4. Some business advice
Have a strong base of technical knowledge. Be a polymath. “Everything a man might know may be helpful
to a merchant”
“Be careful not to take on too many or too large transactions: do not try to net every bird that passes,
because many have failed for taking on too much, but no one for exposing himself too little.”
You must consider the expiry date of credit. The quality of debt deteriorates over time. treatment of
nonperforming loans; after one year, the amount due should be cut in half, and written off entirely after two,
“because for the merchant losing time and losing money are the same thing.”

5. Succession Planning: to be a master you need a master
“...we need to take particular care, when we are beginning to channel the disposition of a son...when
directing them towards the practice of trade, because if that son has a leaning elsewhere...he might not
well prosper in that life, or would only get on with difficulty or remain stuck halfway with small profit to
himself and without reaching his objective, which should be to enrich himself honourably.”
If, however, he is lively by nature, well turned-out and of noble character, and not too fickle nor an idler, but
rather aspires to acquire both honour and profit or victory in war, “then we can say that he is suitable
material for a career in trade.”
And if that is the case, he should learn his trade with an outside mentor for several years: “as soon as they
are grown, they should be placed with a good and knowledgeable merchant so as to learn their trade,
because although many want to become masters without a master, this is not possible.”

6. Give up when you are old
At 50 [70 for now], the merchant’s “natural fervor abates, his blood calms down, his intelligence dims and
his memory becomes less quick, so that he risks committing many errors in his business.” According to the
laws of nature, “it is good that he rest. He wanted money: he has got it; good name: he has it; possessions:
he has them; he has married off his sons and daughters, he has made his pile, fathered and reared
children, he has seen them learn his trade, he is fifty or sixty years old: what more does he want?” he
demands, chiding anyone who wishes to continue working for fear of letting oneself go or being thought a
“layabout.”