The Most Fearful and Fearless Countries When Starting a Business [Infographic]

Laura Brothers 1m 353

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

Fears And Fearless When Starting A Business

According to data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor on entrepreneurship, at least 30% of wannabe entrepreneurs in 42 of 54 countries are scared to take the plunge.

You can find out which countries are the most fearless in the interactive graphic here.

Here’s a snippet of what we found:

The most fearful country when it comes to starting a business is United Arab Emirates with 61% of 16-64s citing fear as a reason not to start a business
In the US, entrepreneurship plays a vital role in the growth of the economy, however 33% of 18-64s cited fear of failure would prevent them from starting a business
In the UK, 36% of 18-64s indicated that fear of failure would prevent them from starting a business, with just 8% listed as new entrepreneurs.

To delve into this deeper, GraphicSprings decided to conduct a survey to establish people’s biggest fears when it comes to starting a business.

The top five fears amongst those surveyed were:

1. Financial insecurity (31%)
Financial insecurity came out as the top fear, with people from the US (32%) slightly more fearful of this than Brits (30%), and with an average of 26,000 businesses going bankrupt each year from 2013 to 2017 in the US, it’s understandable to see why this came out on top.

2. Upfront Costs (25%)
Upfront costs is the second biggest fear for those wanting to start a business, with 1 in 4 people stating this as a top concern.
3. Stress (21%)
Over a fifth of respondents cited stress as a major fear when it comes to starting a business. In fact, 42 percent of millennials have reported they have had a nightmare about their business failing.
4. Political climate (11.6%)
Other notable fears include political climate, with 11.6% of respondents overall selecting it as a top fear. When broken down further, we found that Brits were more concerned than wannabe entrepreneurs in the US, with factors such as Brexit are a likely to play a part.
5. Lack of confidence (11.4%)
Another surprising fear that came top in our result was lack of confidence, with 11.4% of people stating this as a fear when it comes to setting up business.