Every one of us has a winning business idea in us, but it takes a big leap of faith to make that move to turn that winning idea into a viable startup business.
Although thousands of businesses start up in the UK every year, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that more than half of all businesses (57.6%) don’t make it past the five-year mark – a good innings, but that’s a lot of work to eventually wind things up.
And while there’s loads of advice out there on why and how you should go all in for your own startup, there’s not much out there that offers up reasons why you shouldn’t.
But we’ve found some. First though, let’s take a look at how many businesses start up each year.
How many start ups are there in the UK?
The pandemic forced many people out of work, and some business owners had no option but to change how they do things else close their doors forever. But did we really all turn into a nation of entrepreneurs?
It seems so, according to more data from the ONS, alongside some figures from Companies house.
Companies House shows that 221,000 companies were incorporated in Q4 of 2020 – more than at any time during the last decade. The first three months of 2021 then saw 211,000 new companies incorporated and this trend continued into Q2.
And these trends are reflected in ONS data that shows the the number of business incorporations in April 2020 was up 20% compared with the same month in 2019.
Check out the FT for more on these figures.
Here are some more headline figures:
- 665,495 start ups were founded in 2019/2020.
- That works out at 823 new companies being made every day.
- This equates to 75.9 every hour.
- Which is more than one per minute.
But is starting your own business all it’s cracked up to be? Here are some reasons why it might not be.
Why you shouldn’t start up a business
Starting up a business is a massive undertaking, and one that’s often easier to talk yourself out of than in to – after all, if you don’t try, you can’t fail.
And there’s no shame in not trying – no-one wants to see their dream collapse around their ears – but if you don’t give it a go, you’ll never know if your idea could have changed both your life and the lives of those around you.
So before you start looking at the reasons why you should start a business, it might be worth considering the reasons why you shouldn’t.
This infographic from FundersandFounders.com, information designers who explain startups and entrepreneurship visually, offers up 16 good reasons why starting up a business might not be right for you – if any of them resonate with you, it might be worth canning the idea, at least for the time being.
What do you think of the points above? Did you have any doubts about starting your own business only for it to be a roaring success? Or did you think you had a winning idea only to find your startup dream soon became the stuff of nightmares?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, or tell us what you think via Twitter.
