Where are all the entrepreneurs?

With jobs in the private sector at a premium and the closure of the public sector to new entrants, one would expect there to be a plethora of new business start ups.

Or has the depression of the recession affected our entrepreneurial spirit?

Every quarter Bank of Ireland measures the number of new companies which have registered with the CRO. Unsurprisingly (in my opinion), the numbers have been more or less flat recently. A more relevant measure might be new business registrations, which reflect a more informal business start up, without all the red tape and expense of a corporate registration. Unfortunately the CRO doesn’t compile these kinds of statistics, so there’s no way to tell, unless we look at anecodotal information.

Anecdotal opinion – or stories: this is unscientific research but it does provide some interesting pictures of individual cases (where all else fails). For example, we’ve all seen a huge plethora of door drops in recent months for handy men, cleaners, landscape gardeners and more.

Websites and services which are targeting new business are prominent, providing help and information to them to encourage their progress (http://www.business-startup.ie/) , http://www.enterpriseboards.ie/ http://www.startups.ie/ to name but a very few ). Stories in the news reports (e.g. recent Last Word interviews with recent graduates who have set up in business etc) are everywhere.

Either way, I still believe in our entrepreneurial spirit. Shortly after decimating the pay of the public servants yesterday, and introducing real hardship into previously affluent households, Brian Lenihan talked about our spirit. He said: “we need to rediscover our optimism and our self-belief. Now more than ever, we need that confidence on which business thrives.”

Despite what you think of his budget, you have to agree with that: only our self belief and attitude will set us back where we were just a few short years ago (and I mean before the greed and excess of our ‘boom’). We were a tiny nation which was winning respect and liking the world over for our gutsy ‘take on the world and have a laugh doing it’ attitude. Leave out disastrous banking policies and our national obsession with property and I believe we can make our mark again.

Roll on the recovery, I’m tired of the recession!

And for help with your business start up, get in touch with KnowledgeWorks.