Inflation might still be running high but a boom in company registrations is a bright spot in the current climate, says business expert EMMA JONES

Emma Jones CBE is the founder and CEO of Enterprise Nation, a small business and business support network.

Inflation remains high despite June’s data showing a slight contraction, and continues to cast a shadow over the UK economy.

But before we descend, take a moment to look on the bright side: in the first six months of this year, nearly half a million new startups were registered with Companies House.

It is a trend that is not suppressed by economic indicators or inflationary pressures. And even if only a small handful of these companies become the high-growth Unicorns of the future, that’s good news for all of us.

We have been studying this wave of start-up companies for many years. In 2015, the UK reached a record half a million in 12 months. Eight years later, we’ll be there in six months.

The Enterprise Nation Startup Tracker dynamically tracks new companies and found that 431,060 companies were registered in the first six months of 2023 through the end of June, with 78,997 companies registered last month.

This boom in start-ups reflects a continuing trend in entrepreneurship. In 2022, 784,762 companies were registered with Companies House, which is almost 30,000 more than in 2021. In 2019, 670,575 companies were registered. And on we go.

Why? We know from our own research that a third of all adults in the UK were thinking about starting a business at some point this year. Yes, part of that was about increasing revenue in a cost-of-living crisis, but a big part was about giving back, job satisfaction, and skill monetization.

It’s also about awareness. Among the digitally savvy Generation Z, that figure jumps to nearly half (48 percent) who said they want to start a business. That could be anything from personal training to selling second-hand clothes on Depop.

That’s an entire generation that can now expect a career that includes not only multiple jobs, but multiple businesses and sidelines in what could seem like a very different future.

But don’t just take our word for it.

According to another recent report we examined the amount of accessible space available to entrepreneurs, we found a 22 percent increase in demand for co-working spaces, with regional growth particularly strong in northern cities such as Leeds and Manchester.

And in our communities, entrepreneurs feed our high streets, as now 63 percent of neighborhood stores and restaurants are independent.

As we enter the busy second half of 2023, those individuals need the right support to help them efficiently achieve what they set out to do, which is to share their knowledge, add value to their communities and use their talent to raise more money.

Often entrepreneurs have brilliant, life-changing ideas, they just need support to develop a clear plan and help overcome some of the hurdles that can often derail a business. I mean, for example, support with things like budgeting, or understanding cash flow and using digital tools to increase productivity and efficiency.

StartUp UK, a program developed by Enterprise Nation and Monzo Business, is already helping many start-ups develop key business skills on their own time, online.

So far this year, the free program has reached 165,000 small business owners with its webinars, e-learning modules, and support.

This kind of ‘always on’ support is becoming increasingly important, particularly for disadvantaged entrepreneurs, but also for the increasing number of women starting businesses in the UK.

According to the latest report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, one in ten women is already in the early stages of starting a business – an all-time high.

Skeptics will say that these numbers do not reflect the true picture. We admit, for example, they are not balanced by the number of insolvencies. But from our experience, it’s intoxicating to have the experience of working for yourself.

It opens up a whole new world of possibilities, not just for the entrepreneurs involved, but for all of us.

And that should be celebrated.