1/21/2005

Self-Funding Most Important Globally

From About.com:

"London Business School and Babson College just released their Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, which is 'the largest annual measure of entrepreneurial activity worldwide, spanning 34 countries and a total labour force of 784 million people.'

Many of the findings are what you might expect, but some of the findings regarding funding were especially interesting, and contain some lessons for entrepreneurs that may surprise you...

Self-funding by entrepreneurs and funding from informal investors (family, friends, colleagues, neighbours and strangers) are the lifeblood of an entrepreneurial society...

By far the rarest source of capital for nascent entrepreneurs is classic venture capital. So rare is it, that even in the US, which has more than two-thirds of the total venture capital in the entire world (74% VC among G7 nations in 2003), far fewer than one in ten thousand new ventures receive their initial financing from VC firms. US companies received $8.1 million VC funding compared to an average of $1.2 million per company in other G7 nations in 2003."