An Honest Look at Startup Health From U.S. Business Owners [Visual Survey]

The American Dream is alive and well with entrepreneurs starting their own business ventures left and right. While many aspiring entrepreneurs might be discouraged by the dismal survival rates of startups, others might be surprised that the beginning might not be as difficult as they thought.

Intuit conducted a survey of 500 small business owners across the U.S. to better understand how startups get started, and to glean wisdom from entrepreneurs who have either succeeded or failed at starting a business. The results showed that 64% of small business owners start their business with less than $10,000, and three quarters of them relied on their personal savings to get things going. As far as new business challenges go, 68% say the first year in business is the toughest, and the biggest regret of small business owners reflecting on their first year is that they didn't spend more time learning about financial management.

These stats and more are visualized in the infographic below, where we learn that it's nice to have people go before us and pave the way for success.

 

Matthew Toren
 

Matthew Toren is a serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor and co-founder of YoungEntrepreneur.com. He is co-author, with his brother Adam, of Kidpreneurs.org, BizWarriors.com and Small Business, BIG Vision: Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right (Wiley).