This week we attended a round table discussion hosted by Lord Davies, the Minister for Trade and Industry to discuss women and business growth. Research by the University of Strathclyde Business School highlighted key issues and challenges facing women growing their businesses, which included that they were less likely to be serial and portfolio entrepreneurs compared to men.
The research found that women business owners tend to be younger and their businesses smaller than men’s, and they were less likely to start their business with a high level of capital, and more likely to rely on informal sources of capital, to avoid debt. The research did find, however, that given the same starting resources male and female businesses perform equally well.
We did some research of our own, asking our members about their views on growth. 88 percent of those that took the survey suggested they had been inspired to grow their ventures after reading about other women’s business success stories, and the same number said they would take advantage of online access to experienced entrepreneurs for advice on gaining investment, employing others and exporting products and services. The most important figure, though, was that 97 percent of our members said they had already started, or would like to start investigating angel investment, employing others and or exporting.
What was also great to hear was that the majority of those that filled in our survey felt online networking communities like the everywoman Network would be their first port of call for gaining advice in the area of growth, along with the a bank or accountant for investment advice.
It is a fact that there are more and more women starting their own businesses, a lot out of desire and some out of necessity, so it’s key that new start ups have a solid business plan to think about growth in the long term.
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