Start-Up Britian 2017: Ambitious Millennials

The ICG's Jeff Deighton, and budding neologist, reports on some recent findings and creates a new word – Millennipreneurs!

The UK is generally accepted as a great place to start a business and post-Brexit, there may or may not be uncertainty in the economy, but one thing is certain, there are some members of the Great British public who are optimistic and claim to be entrepreneurially minded!

Last month insight engineers polled 1,500 UK nationally representative consumers, revealing one quarter of us have plans to start a new business venture in the next 12 months and 1 in 12 are confident enough to say they will ‘definitely start one’.

However, it is ‘Millennials’, those born in the 80s or 90s, with the older members of this cohort now approaching 25-34 years old, where hope & ambition burns brightest – in comparison nearly 2 in 5 have the ambition and plans to grow the UK business sector in the next 12 months. 

Whilst barriers to success continue to involve factors such as a lack of bank lending, taxation, and the (real) costs and administrative burdens of running a business, it is clear from similar polls & reports around the world that Millennials are discovering entrepreneurship significantly earlier than their parents. Many of the parents of Millennials opened their first business in their mid-30s, whereas Millennials are looking earlier – an authoritative report from BNP Paribas reveals such “Millennipreneurs” are looking to set out in their late 20s, meaning some of them will already have nearly a decade of experience before their parents’ generation took the same step. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, born in May 1994, so currently 32 years of age, is a leading example that you can start & own a company in your early 20s and remain the chief executive 10 years later when it has become a huge organisation.

Whilst it may remain true that half of new businesses don’t survive beyond five years, and particularly smaller SME owners struggle to plan for the long term, post-Brexit, it seems hopeful that many of the Millennials will have the courage & ambition to become masters of their own show.