He did it, with two weeks to spare. In 2008, he and business partner Trevor Folsom sold Blueprint Management Group, the financial services business they'd started in 1996 with $5000 in capital each, for $109 million, a week before the GFC hit. That's why we're standing here this cool September Thursday, heavy-breathing halfway up a small mountain about 40 kilometres from Lithgow in the World Heritage-listed Wollemi National Park.

Since their "exit" – entrepreneur-speak for selling a business – Price has travelled the world making his name as an entrepreneurial evangelist. Working with Richard Branson's Centre of Entrepreneurship in South Africa, he's trained thousands of entrepreneurs. He also pioneered the start-up bootcamp for Branson.

Folsom has meanwhile built a reputation as one of Australia's canniest and most prolific early-stage ("angel") investors, with a portfolio boasting six times return on investment. Two years ago the two former farm boys from central NSW, competitor-colleagues since their early 20s, teamed up again to put what they'd learnt into a start-up that builds start-ups. Their company, Investible, aims to be a "revolutionary vehicle that is the best place to build, grow, exit and invest into high-growth businesses". "We minimise the risk of launching a start-up for aspiring entrepreneurs and de-risk pre-IPO investing for investors," their bold pitch says. The plan is to launch in 20 cities by 2020.

They call it a "business generation lab". It's a production line for businesses, designed as a repeatable and scalable process. It takes aspiring entrepreneurs from the idea stage through business building all the way to a graceful exit, preferably with a fat cheque. It's Survivor for start-ups, with spreadsheets. Though it relies on the idea that entrepreneurship can be taught, there's a paradox: "not everyone" has what it takes to navigate what Price calls "the treacherous journey". So today, Day Four of start-up bootcamp, we're climbing a mountain, literally and metaphorically. It's a six-hour hike. The National Parks sign at the trail head says it's "hard".

"The main thing for today is understanding there are stages," says Price. "If you can split your business journey into discrete elements you are more likely to achieve it."

The 16 participants, about the same number of men as women, range in age from early 20s to early 50s. They've sweated to be here. Most are paying $4500 per founder team (up to three people) for four nights shivering in a tent and sloshing through mud at Newnes, where there's no water on tap and no mobile network coverage. In consolation, the view is spectacular. Photo-ready kangaroos with joeys in their pouches come sniffing around at close quarters.

Bootcamp is the compulsory first week of Investible's eight-week incubator program called LAB. The campers have been selected through an application, a one-on-one interview and what Folsom describes as the "secret sauce": a questionnaire assessing whether they are likely to succeed as entrepreneurs developed by Michelle Duval of Fingerprint For Success.

"It's a pretty hard, extreme situation, they're spending four nights in a tent in close quarters with lots of challenges," says Price. "You find out what people have got ... when something comes up they're not familiar with, how they approach that, because that's really what business is all about."

Joanna Sader, who answered a call-out for a business partner from her would-be co-founder Merissa Cohen on a Facebook mother's forum only a month ago, confides she's finding the camp conditions "rough". She looks a bit out of place, stylish among the tracksuits in her pink jacket and pearl earrings. Her face is a picture of mortification when it takes me a while to comprehend her business idea to do with new mothers, fitness and coupons she's meant to be able to explain in one minute flat. "I'm not getting it, am I? I haven't got the pitch!" Bootcamp does that to you.

Over the five days, teams compete in 12 challenges as a prelude to the next seven weeks when, they're warned, the "furious pace requires serious dedication". They're battling for a big prize at the end of the LAB program: up to $250,000 in equity investment and support services from Club Investible, the group led by Folsom of 25 investor partners so far who've signed up to invest $100,000 a year in early-stage start-ups.

From LAB, up to two companies are selected to progress on to Investible's incubator program, called the PAD. They are expected to raise additional capital from the market at minimum valuations of $1 million within the first 90 days. They then have another 12-month "runway" to build their worth and raise further capital at whatever fair market value is determined by the founders and investors.

But that's a way down the track and a different set of challenges. For bootcamp, there's a masterchef competition (because business models are like recipes), an orienteering challenge (because you need to plan and navigate your passions) and a theatre challenge (because you have to be like a movie producer, and harness your talents), among others.

The theme for the previous night's theatre challenge was decisionmaking and superheroes. Price, a veteran of team-building exercises, had warned in an aside that the five-minute skits would descend into sexual innuendo. He thinks it's something to do with the bush, the dark, and all that burping and farting among strangers. His prediction is 100 per cent right. There's cross-dressing, silly wigs, and hilarity aplenty. It's innocent fun and a textbook case for the old rule: what goes on bootcamp stays on bootcamp.

Not long into the uphill "walkshop" we come to a creek and a bucket challenge: the team that can carry a bucket full of holes up a steep slope with the most water at the end wins. The water is a metaphor, of course, for liquidity, and the importance of cash flow in keeping a business above water. It's the Blue Team by a big margin, because, says team member Kelly Slessor, they were "really focused, stayed together, and kept it slow and steady".

With the ravine falling away behind him, Price gestures at a chart illustrating the business-as-mountain metaphor. The take-aways roll out of him as effortlessly as if he were yarning around the campfire. Up to 99 per cent of start-up businesses don't last. You don't go climbing a high-altitude mountain without any training. Above all you want to steer clear of the perfect start-up storm: first-time entrepreneur in an industry you've no experience of with a business model that's never existed before.

That can be a pretty fast track to falling off the mountain. "People think they are going to be the next Facebook. But really, you have less chance than winning the lottery," says Price.

The industry aphorism is that seed funding for start-ups traditionally comes from "friends, families and fools", but Investible means to take the heartbreak out of it.

"Out of 10 start-ups, you might get one that gets the big multiples" of return on investment, says Folsom. Australia has "amazing entrepreneurial spirit" but many start-ups languish in the "valley of death", unable to raise capital from the $100,000-to-$10 million stage. "The risk is there early on but so are the returns. If we can bridge that gap, get vcs [venture capitalists] to back these businesses early into markets," there's greater likelihood more than one in 10 will generate big returns, he says.

The track's getting steeper but on the chart, we're still in start-up phase. Phil Chen with his business partner Susan Yu is working on an education business they're calling "STEAM", which puts the arts into science, technology, engineering and maths. He heaves and slips along the wet track behind me for a while. "I thought Monday was bad," he says breathlessly, referring to an infamous night hike earlier in the week. "This is worse."

"You know you're through the start-up period when your personal income stops going backwards and your credit card debts stop increasing," Price says during a breather. We still have the hard yards ahead of us. We should expect setbacks, but never lose sight of our goal. The soles have completely detached from Deepak Khemchandani's shoes, so he'll have to slide down the mountain in his uppers. He's laughing. It might count in his favour. Setbacks and all that.

The track is steep as we near the summit. Another breather, another apposite anecdote from Price. This one's about how, when he and Folsom were starting out, the door kept slamming in their faces. How they finally did the pitch of their lives to Westpac, who wanted to visit their office the next day. How they rushed back to their "crappy" digs and mobilised the five staff to hire pot plants, computers and furniture, plus family and friends to man the phones "so it looked like we had some clients". Price says no lies were told, and when they later 'fessed up to the "Hollywood set" charade, the Westpac executives had figured it out anyway. "You do have to have a bit of front. First impressions are important," says Price. Both sides did well out of the deal, he adds.

Suddenly the track opens out and the sky is huge all around. As we tuck into pasta from a ziplock bag, it's time for the vision thing. "If you build in a small dark place your business is going to be small. But when you are at a high point, you really have a bigger vision," says Price.

Kelly Slessor and Emma Sharley have been working for two years on an e-commerce platform for customising women's wardrobes, "your brands, your size", they promise. Up here, "it is really giving us headspace ... We are getting clearer and clearer. We have been talking about how we make it the platform with the biggest number of brands in Australia," says Slessor.

Cindy Huynh, 21, is here with her former boyfriend, now co-founder, Temuge Namjilsuren, also 21. Three years ago they started a business which produced learning videos free to HSC students. It was "an awesome product" but they made rookie mistakes: "We didn't really understand how to create a proper business model," says Hyunh. Their next idea is a platform they're calling "Twork It" which will connect business owners with freelance "emerging creatives".

"I am diving into something so crazy that other 21-year-olds don't actually do," she says. "I'm having the time of my life, even though I'm scared like crazy."