We keep hearing how we are a nation of entrepreneurs and that more and more young people are trying to set up businesses, but in reality how much funding is there really out there for these budding entrepreneurs. We've frequently reported on the lack of funding from banks, but there are other options out there and new suggestions constantly being thrown about. Richard Branson, for example, has put forward the idea that young people who do not go to university could use their student loan to start a business instead. This would give them access to much needed finance, but with the low interest rates and long payback terms that undergraduates receive with the student loan system.
You may have come across the Get Mentoring scheme, which aims to create a network of thousands of business mentors that will give SMEs access to the wealth of experience from entrepreneurs. This is all well and good, but advice is of no use if businesses haven't got the funding to get started in the first place. So, it has been suggested this idea of mentoring be used in a different manner with the help of large corporations.
