Young entrepreneurs: this generation - Page 5

"But I'm so glad that I've taken this chance to do this. It's great fun."

The risks

Risk always counters reward in enterprise, whatever age you are. And if you have a lot to gain, you have a lot to lose.

Way relished the multi-millions he was making by the age of 17. "I bought myself nice TV, a multi-million pound penthouse in Jersey - it was very surreal." But then he ran into problems with his shareholders. "I literally lost everything - my house, the girl I loved, my car, everything. I lost the whole lot in the space of about two months."

You're going to have bad days, you're going to have shit days when you think why the fuck am I doing this, but that's business.

Surely that was enough to put him off business for life? "I lost years of my childhood, I've had some bad and rough times, but would I swap it for the world? Not at all. This is life.

"You're going to have bad days, you're going to have shit days when you think why the fuck am I doing this, but that's business. The reality is that they reason that you're doing this is that there are generally much better times ahead.

"The longer you do business, the easier it gets."

Support

These days, though, there is more infrastructure in place to help young people start-up than in former years. Way says that support networks now are "ten times better" than when he was starting out.

Batty used a wide variety of support options available to him, including two business advisors he was put in touch with by YE. "They helped with any queries and were really helpful, providing ideas."

He's also found support through business contacts. "It's been quite unorthodox but I've been really lucky with people I've met along the way. They're not the Business Links or the traditional sort of mentors. They're the people just doing what they do, who you see out and about or you bump into at meetings. They're just at the end of email. It isn't part of anyone's job or responsibility, it's just a natural commitment everyone seems to have to supporting young people."

Having achieved a seat at Loughborough University's Innovations Centre, Lock had access to the various means of support it offered. "It was a lot of meetings, tutorials and lectures. I used them in my first year, and it was useful, but I got to the point where I had all this work to do and didn't really have time.

He's recently started using a personal mentor recommended to him by his university, free of charge, which he has found more useful. "I was quite pessimistic about it to start - thinking, 'I'm not that kind of guy, life coach, it's not me.' But the first meeting did solve a few problems and nagging issues which were on my mind. And then I was a lot more enthusiastic. We can talk through anything. Then the issues just spark."

And there are a whole range of bigger organisations offering support for young people in business -Young Enterprise, Make Your Mark, the Bright Ideas Trust, the Prince's Youth Business International and the Prince's Trust to name but a few of the most prolific.

The future's in their hands

And with all that on offer, there are fewer barriers to starting-up than ever before. Throw in the fact that the young internet generation are better connected and more able to access what they need than ever before, add a dash of the escalating cost of education that's pushing more and more people into alternative routes to success, and it could just be that this generation will take up the entrepreneurial baton and run with it like never before.

The economy needs to pick up speed, and the under-25s might just be the ones with the energy and inventiveness to do it.

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