PRIME Initiative

PRIME has published a report called Olderpreneur Outcomes. It looks into what happened to people aged over 50 who contacted PRIME about starting in business.

The report is based on telephone and email polling of 283 people, the vast majority of whom were interviewed by phone. All had originally contacted PRIME between October 2003 and May 2005.

The good news is that 43% had gone ahead and started a business, 30% were still considering it - and only 27% had given up.

People contacting PRIME turn out overwhelmingly to be aged in their 50s. Only 15% of the respondents were people in their 60s or 70s. This is reflected in the business outcomes, with most (84%) of the people starting businesses being in their 50s too.

However, it does appear that the older people are when they contact PRIME the more they are prepared to get on with it and start their business, and the less inclined to delay. Once on the route, the older olderpreneurs are more likely to see it through. Though this runs counter to expectations if one is used to thinking in terms of enterprise being a preserve of youth, from the responses to this study, it appears to be true.

Also running counter to expectations were differences between the genders, which were more marked than we expected. Women take longer setting up their businesses, but once started on the process may be just as likely to eventually establish an enterprise as men. However, interest in starting a business seems to drop off more rapidly for women than men, with very few women in their 60s and 70s even contacting PRIME.

This means that despite womankind’s greater longevity, most olderpreneurs will turn out to be men. Of the 121 respondents to this study who had gone ahead and started their own businesses, 85 - that’s 71%, were male and 35 (29%) female. We think that the earlier state pension age for women probably plays a big role here, removing some financial pressure from women earlier (although women are more likely to have a lower pension than men) and perhaps reinforcing expectations that women in their 60s should not work.