More than three quarters (76 per cent) of micro-businesses launched with less than £2,000 of start-up funds, according to a survey by freelancer website PeoplePerHour.
The results of the survey into start-up costs comes in the same week that Lord Young, the prime minister’s enterprise adviser, published his ‘Growing your Business’ report, and stated that this is a ‘very good time’ to start a business.
Some 86 per cent of respondents say they are ‘spare room’ start-ups, running their businesses from a home office, rather than from a serviced office or shared workspace.
Also, rather then giving up their jobs and putting a strain on their finances, more than a third of micro-business owners say they started their businesses while they were still working.
More than three quarters (76 per cent) used personal savings, 20 per cent asked for help from friends and family, while 13 per cent used their redundancy money.
Only 2.5 per cent of those business owners polled secured a bank loan, with only 2.5 per cent receiving a grant of some description and just 0.8 per cent had help from a private investor.
Six in ten micro-business owners were over 30 when they started their business, and more than a quarter (28 per cent) were actually over 40 when they launched their start-up, with 11 per cent over 50.
Almost a quarter (24 per cent) of start-up micro-businesses launched in the past year have been internet-based, while technology (14 per cent), design (14 per cent), marketing and PR (12 per cent) and professional service (11 per cent) businesses also feature strongly.
Xenios Thrasyvoulou, founder and CEO of PeoplePerHour says, ‘Starting a business is now most definitely open to anyone. You don’t have to be from a wealthy family, have a background in finance or have started on your entrepreneurial journey while in your teens.
‘The belief that it takes thousands of pounds of start-up capital to launch a business is simply not the case any more. A large number of micro-businesses are launched from home offices with very limited funds.’
