The Business Bulletin
Start-ups – what are your options for finance? As we know, starting a business, certainly for the first time, carries many risks, particularly if you have no prior experience of managing a business. According to the Office for National Statistics [ONS] only 40% of newly formed companies and businesses are still trading after 5 years. In fact, the ONS also reports that in some sectors failures can be as high as 90% within the first year!!
The four most common reasons for new businesses to fail are: ■ Lack of business planning ■ Poor management ■ Insufficient working capital ■ Blowing marketing budgets There is no doubt that raising finance for new start businesses can be the most challenging time to raise funding. It is also true that ‘insufficient investment and/or working capital finance’ is a key factor in many startup failures. It is a sad reality that many new start-up businesses are destined to fail for this reason, but that many could avoid failure if they had only sought help in raising the funding they needed. In a recent survey conducted by Ipsos Mori, on behalf of the British Business Bank, one of the key findings was that ‘The lack of
Issue 13 – Finance | 19
