Accidental entrepreneur

The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market

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Accidental Entrepreneur

June 13, 2012

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The Accidental Entrepreneur is NOT a Theory Anymore


Business Creation Up during and after Great Recession

• Great Recession caused unprecedented business death AND unprecedented business birth

• 60,000 more new businesses were created per month in 2009 than in 2007

• Trend Continues…70,000 more per month in 2010, and 50,000 more per month in 2011


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Source: Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity 1996-2011, March 2012


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Research Methodology

• Survey performed by Forrester Consulting• 305 U.S. SMBs (3 to 250 employees)

– 50/50 split among companies founded pre- and post-2008 • Company executive or IT decision maker• Cross industry

Objective:Understand the differences – with respect to technology adoption/ utilization /consumption models – between SMBs started since 2008 as a result of the recession (accidental entrepreneurs) and those started prior to 2008.

Who is the Accidental Entrepreneur?

• Laid off from white collar job• Returning from war• The “newly unretired”• Stay-at-home spouses• Not just “old economy”• White collar, tech-savvy professionals at the peak of

their career

The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 5

How are Accidental Entrepreneurs different?

• Driven by profits not passion

• Bullish about growth

• Take dramatic and immediate advantage of the cloud

• Better prepared to scale security

• More self-sufficient in making software decisions


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Key Findings

Source: “The Accidental Entrepreneur,” Forrester Custom Research prepared for Symantec, May 2012

Profits not passion drive post-2008 small businesses

• 54% of SBs founded post-2008 have an exit strategy(15% higher)

• 34% of founders of SBs since 2008 come from large enterprises (500+ employee)

• 35% left their large employers due to the recession


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Growing faster than traditional small businesses

• Four times as many Accidental Entrepreneurs expect to double their number of employees in the next two years

• 75% expect revenue to grow more than 10 percent in the next year


Trust more applications to the cloud

• 21% of Accidental Entrepreneurs have zero servers and 35% have 3+ servers– Sophisticated IT infrastructure; four times more likely to build in the cloud

• 51% deploy cloud software– 26% have implemented cloud security vs. 16% of pre-2008

• All SBs aggressively adopting cloud storage and backup– 32% post-2008 and 29% of pre-2008


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Better prepared to scale security for growth

• Turn to the cloud more for endpoint, network firewall, email and web security

• 27% more confident that their current security solution will scale


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More self-sufficient in making software decisions

• Base software decisions on what the founder used in their previous job or as a consumer (across all software types)

• Strongly prefer known brands• Extremely less likely than pre-recession

SBs to rely on VAR recommendation for collaboration and security software


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Accidental Entrepreneurs Are Velociraptors Feasting On The Herd

Conclusions

• Accidental Entrepreneurs:– Are growing significantly faster and at the expense of less technically-

confident, less agile, less ‘connected’ small business owner

– Are mostly “Enterprise-like” or “Cutting Edge” companies

– Are very likely to acquire “consumer technology” at retail and then seek to modify it as their needs become more complex

– Need simple, easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage solutions that can keep pace as they quickly scale their company


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Symantec is committed to providing this new class of entrepreneur with information protection solutions built for SMBs from the ground up.

Thank you!

Copyright © 2012 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec and the Symantec Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

This document is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advertising. All warranties relating to the information in this document, either express or implied, are disclaimed to the maximum extent allowed by law. The information in this document is subject to change without notice.

Thank you!


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Accidental entrepreneur

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