Starting Up But Without The Risk

Black Enterprise:

Despite the credit crunch woes, there can rarely have been a better time to be an entrepreneur in Britain. Investment in new businesses is booming and there is a range of government incentives, including the loan guarantee scheme and regional venture capital funds.

It is even fashionable to be an entrepreneur, as testified by the hit BBC television series Dragons Den, which has made celebrity stars of the expert panellists who make or break budding business ventures.

Increasingly, Britain is developing a culture of people wanting to take destiny into their own hands and build a business, say gurus such as David Lester, founder of www.startups.co.uk. There is always room for the right product, he insists, and he should know. Lester set up his first venture, a computer games company, at the age of 22, and sold it for tens of millions of pounds to the US games giant Sierra before he was 30.

The website claims franchising is one of the safest ways to start a business because it is a way of setting up for yourself but not on your own, which removes a lot of the risk. You run the business using a tried-and-tested method established by the franchisor, who gives you an exclusive territory and allows you to use its brand name for a prescribed period say, 5 years on a renewable contract.

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