Virginia, 11 Oct 2021, ZEXPRWIRE, Despite the lingering pandemic and more volatile financial markets, aspiring franchise owners are wanting to start their businesses sooner. Entrepreneurs who agree or strongly agree that “now is a good time to start a business” grew to 73.4% in September, continuing a three-month uptrend approaching the record level of 76.9% reached in June 2021. A record 36.1% of aspiring owners anticipate starting their businesses in the coming month. FranchiseInsights.com compiles monthly the Small Business Startup Sentiment Index (SSI) of individuals who have recently inquired about businesses for sale.

The most recent Startup Sentiment Index survey was conducted September 23-29, 2021, as concerns about the progress of the Delta Covid variant, financial market volatility, and a debt ceiling impasse in Congress. 

Additional highlights:

– Future business conditions: Respondents are sanguine about the current state of the economy, with 46.5% believing that in three months, business conditions will be “better” or “much better” than now, up from 41.3% in August. Over 47% see conditions “about the same” in three months.

– Access to funding: The percentage of entrepreneurs concerned about finding adequate funding decreased, with those seeing funding “harder or much harder” to obtain at 16.8% in September, down from 32.2%.

– Demographics: In September, 46.0% of respondents were currently employed full-time, and 18.0% were current business owners. Gen-X (52.1) and Gen-Y (28.9%) are the largest age cohorts, while “Baby Boomers” follow at 16.2% of respondents.

“The skies are blue and the few clouds have silver linings” says Hunter Stokes, president of FranchiseVentures. “Entrepreneurs are looking past the current challenges and are ready to become their own boss.”

Download a copy of the September 2021 SSI report here. See excerpts from prior SSI surveys and subscribe to receive the Small Business Startup Sentiment Index monthly report when it is released.

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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