Scotland has been ranked as the third most ‘primed and ready’ location for start-ups and budding entrepreneurs in the UK.
Enterprise software company Sage surveyed more than 1,000 people, finding that half of entrepreneurs in Scotland earned the ‘ready and set’ accolade - compared to the UK average of 45%.
To be ‘ready and set’ means they have funding and business know-how and have the mindset needed to be their own boss.
The next biggest group are ‘keen machines’ (26%) who are characterised as diligent, hard-working and have a solid business idea – they just need to take those final few steps to get started.
A further 6% each are ‘process pros’ - with a head for detail and an ace on admin - and ‘dreamers’ - who have top start-up qualities of passion, vision and self-belief.
Scotland’s ‘ready and set’ score was only beaten by entrepreneurs in the North East (51%) and in Northern Ireland (65%), but it was a whole 10% ahead of London in 11th position.
The findings are also backed by further research from Sage, which spoke to existing business owners and business dreamers up and down the country over the past year, to understand what factors held them back when looking to start their business.
This discovered that 27% of small business owners think that a lack of self-belief delayed or stopped them from taking the plunge initially, while 48% were hindered by a lack of confidence in themselves.
Nearly a quarter (23%) were concerned about getting to grips with compliance, but only 11% of business owners identified this as an actual issue in practice.
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