September Startup Sentiment Index™ Shows Highest Intent Ever of Business Startups Planned 3 Months Out

Pending Election Puts damper on October Startup Plans

​​​​In a remarkable turnabout, future business owners planning to start “this month” dropped, while startups planned “3 months out” reached the highest level on record in responses collected Sept. 23-30, 2020, for the FranchiseInsights.com Small Business Startup Sentiment Index™ (SSI).

Additional highlights:

  • While "access to funding" remains the biggest concern, the economic climate and political changes have grown the most among the six biggest factors impacting startup sentiment
  • Concerns regarding a​ccess to funding, historically the most significant factor, have abated over the last seven months
  • Entrepreneurs are the most optimistic about "business conditions 3 months out" than they have been since April 2020.
  • While the pandemic has had a devastating impact on small businesses, almost 39% of the entrepreneurs indicated that Covid-19 actually increased their "interest in controlling their own destiny through business ownership" in September's survey.

“These are the most encouraging signs of animal spirits among aspiring business owners that we have seen in 2020,” says Michael Alston, senior advisor to FranchiseInsights.com. “The data portend a coming boom in business formation in the aftermath of the pandemic.”

Download a copy of the September SSI report here. See excerpts from prior SSI™ surveys and subscribe to receive the Small Business Startup Sentiment Index™ monthly when it is released.

In August we reported the encouraging development that over 36% of respondents indicated they were “more likely to start a business now than three months ago,” and the percentage of respondents that were “less or much less likely to start a business than three months ago” decreased to 8%, the lowest reading in 2020. These notable improvements in buyer optimism might suggest that concerns about the pandemic have been recently overshadowed by concerns about the near-term economy and the upcoming election.

The Small Business Startup Sentiment Index™ is based on a monthly survey of individuals who have recently inquired about businesses or franchises for sale on the digital assets of FranchiseVentures.

About Franchise Insights

A unit of FranchiseVentures, Franchise Insights provides research and intelligence to help the franchise industry and investors understand and meet the needs of budding entrepreneurs who want to own their own businesses. With a vast and growing proprietary data set of U.S. franchise inquiries, we use the tools of data science to make inferences and discover best practices to foster the growth of small businesses.

FranchiseVentures is the leading demand generation platform for aspiring business buyers and franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, FranchiseSolutions.com, FranchiseGator.com, FranchiseOpportunities.com, FranchiseForSale.com, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective business and franchise buyers in the U.S.

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​Media Contact:

Michael Alston
​Phone: 757.351.8808
Email: malston@deonline.com

Source: Franchise Insights