What's Your Need Of Financing?
i2m - Ideas to market, a UK based research firm, has released some very interesting figures in terms of startup financing, according to Sun Startup Essential Blogs. They have researched some 800 entrepreneurs and small business owners over a variety of areas.
The key findings of the financial research has shown that about 40% of startups seek under 10,000 GBP to become profitable while 30% seek between 10,000 and 100,000 GBP to become profitable. Only about 15% of startups seek more than 100,000 GBP to become profitable.
In the findings, Permjot Valia, a business angel and member of the British Business Angel Association describes that the engine of Britain's entrepreneurial industry is friends and family. If you take this thinking to the Nordics, I'd say the results would be tilted towards the 100k€ mark.
This of course raises questions of other sorts - are we really able to bootstrap up here? Do we take the financial status for granted and regard that something as of a given right even in a startup? Provocative questions to ask, but what are your thoughts - which category would you reckon would be the largest in your home country?
Photo by jenn_jenn.
I would (again) think more about what is meant with "startups" here. I could think of a wide variety of small businesses, which could get profitable with a funding of 15.000 EUR.
But when you think about the tech/web/etc startup scene, then yes, it tilts towards the 100.000 mark, and more. I guess the difference is in having a business model (like, cutting people's hair for money) vs. having something cool and potentially valuable (like a 2.0 site).
I would agree with Niko. Any of the companies in the tag cloud on the right will need a lot more than 100 kEUR to become profitable, regardless of the country. But, start-up does not only mean tech startup.
From my experience, finnish start-ups are good bootstrappers, at least haven't met any boasting with their money / financial status.