Back in the days when this blogger attended university, typical student jobs were fairly restricted to bar-keeping, shelf stocking, envelope stuffing and occasional unpaid shifts at the student union (where you’d get in to events for free and they might let you snaffle a beer). Scroll forward a couple of decades and things have changed considerably. The latest role the university masses are proud to add to their CVs? Student entrepreneur.
According to a survey put together by PeoplePerHour, there has been a whopping 42% increase in the number of student entrepreneurs in the last 12 months, with 67% citing a lack of job security as the reason for starting their own business.
This certainly chimes with our experience at My Accountant Friend. Two years ago we spent some time working with two young millennial entrepreneurs, Olivia Cappuccini (founder and CEO of Scenes of Reason) and Max Mallows (co-founder of 1Roof.com). At the time both of them were in their mid-20s, and yet neither had known anything other than entrepreneurship. “When we left university, there simply weren’t any jobs,” they explained. “The easiest path was to create something for ourselves, putting our destiny into our own hands.”
How do they find the time, you might ask? Setting aside the fact that they’re students, so they’ll never know this kind of freedom again, it’s still astonishing to read that 50% of student entrepreneurs fit in at least 20 hours of work on their business each week, with 25% working on it while they’re out socialising, 29% working on it between lectures and a cheeky 11% working on their business plans during classes.
The survey also gives the sense that this new generation of student entrepreneurs have perhaps been born with business knowhow running through their veins. While it has taken many traditional entrepreneurs years to get their ideas up and running, their younger counterparts tend to strike while the iron is hot – 36% of them got their business up and running within three months of coming up with the idea, although 19% said it took them more than 12 months from idea conception to actually making any money. They may also be more ambitious than previous generations – 35% said they had always planned to be their own boss anyway.
In a country where startups are booming, this is great news for the UK’s freelancers. Earlier this year we reported that six out of 10 SMEs prefer hiring freelancers to full-time staff, and with all of these new student-built companies launching we have to wonder – has there ever been a better time to be offering your services from beneath your own umbrella?
If you’re starting out in business and you need help and advice with setting up your company and running your accounts, we’d be delighted to share our knowledge. My Accountant Friend is the only online accountancy firm with dedicated accountants to help you run your cloud-based accounting software. We’re friendly, experienced and happy to answer any questions you may have. Why not give us a call?
