Angels Den Blog

We Brits are a funny lot. Unlike other nationalities, we seem to endure a regular inner struggle with the concept of entrepreneurial spirit. The challenge of launching a venture is all too often snuffed out by the desire for a safe, comfortable life, and we don’t always find it easy to praise others when they succeed in business. Yes, our great nation has led the world, given it incredible inventions, adventurers and stories of great heroism and achievement but in recent times we have turned into savers, plodders and procrastinators more familiar with safety and security than tenacity and chance. However, as we face the deepest recession in decades is this “very British” attitude beginning to change?

The launch of a new venture into the big wide world is often only possible with the injection of more capital than an entrepreneur can themselves invest. With the banking world in complete disarray, entrepreneurs have been turning to business angels to provide small business funding. Such business angels must have an adventurous spirit, something we Brits are not particularly comfortable with, so one would have thought that in this difficult economic period, angel investors would be fewer in number and harder to please? Well, no. In fact we have seen increasing numbers of wealthy, successful angel investors registering with us at www.angelsden.co.uk seeking to assist fledgling businesses to launch, grow and shine. So what is it that is spurring these small business funding experts into action in these dark times.

Business angels know that no matter how careful they are with their due diligence they are still gambling with their own money. Sometimes small business funding will come off and make everyone very rich and happy, at other times all will be lost for reasons nobody could have predicted. Nonetheless, it is the demystification of small business funding, the popularity of angel investing on TV and the fact that so many individuals are successfully reclaiming their financial destinies from their confused brokers that has resulted in an increase of calculated risk-takers prepared to lay it all on the line for a business investment they truly believe in.

The Blitz spirit is alive and well. At a time when you’d expect we’d all be battening down the hatches, bringing in the cat and setting our alarms to wake us when the recession’s over, we seem to be becoming more adventurous … is this really true? More and more small businesses are starting up with the help of business angels and even more are signing up with business angel websites like ours to find the perfect partner. There seems to be a new determination to drag this country back out of the economic doldrums, to unshackle ourselves from our risk-obverse persona and reward those individuals who succeed. How very “new British” of us!

Image © Annie Mole