Journalists love statistics.  I REALLY love statistics. Why?

Because you can weave a really interesting article around them and often the headline just falls out of the copy.  Usually, I only get to cast my calculator over numbers that are presented to me in perfect bound report with someone else’s interpretation already overlaying them, so I took it as a great compliment (and a sign of the integrity of the organisation by the way) when the team at Funding Knight offered to share the raw data they had received from a survey of investors and financial decision makers about crowd lending and other matters. 

Rather than just providing you with a lengthy analysis of the raw data, I have risen to the challenge of drawing out the really pertinent findings from it, some of which are interesting about the relative position of crowd lending in the market and there are others which are just plain interesting!

This is what I found out.

• In the pecking order of how entrepreneurs are considering funding their businesses in the future, crowd lending is marginally more popular than crowd equity and invoice financing and much more popular than bank lending or taking out a personal overdraft.  It is marginally less popular than raising equity from 3^rd parties or from friends & relatives.  Grants as a source of funding are something almost half of the survey respondents would consider.
• 30% of entrepreneurial led businesses recognise that they need funding to grow more quickly than otherwise.  Interestingly over 60% have not had problems trying to get funding which belies the popular belief that ambitious companies struggle in the “Equity Gap”
• Over a quarter of the companies that raised finance used it to hire staff.  Only 7^th used it to start exporting and 14% to launch a new product or service.  No wonder the jobless figures are falling!
• A large minority of entrepreneurs see that crowd funding options will have a major impact overall on the funding landscape (for the better), but tend to be personally less certain it will definitely be a route they would use.  Interestingly only 13% thought that companies will use a mixture of traditional and alternative options to funding to gain access to finance.
• When it comes to spending time with other business people, most entrepreneurs still opt for email and face to face meetings over and above the telephone, social networking and live local business events.  They spend this time largely to meet people to do business with rather than general networking or advice sharing.
• That being said less than 10% do not believe in sharing information and advice with other businesses!
• Entrepreneurs are a confident lot – 46% have made their best business decisions based on gut instinct.  And 13% said the decisions were based on luck
• Professional advisers are more trusted for the provision of business advice than business associates, business clubs and MUCH more trusted than banks and friends and family.  A mere 7% trust Government business advice schemes the most.
• Interestingly when it comes to investing personally entrepreneurs are pretty evenly split between whether or not they would be more inclined to back a personal connection – 38%, 37% wouldn’t and 25% said they did not know.
• As a general rule women seem to have a higher awareness of crowd funding than their male counterparts which is interesting and seem to have sense that it would be a more successful route to get finance than men do.  They are especially interested in crowd lending and are more certain that it will be  key source of finance in the future than men.
• Women are better networked online whether it is email or via social networks than men. They rely more on advice to make business decisions.  Men prefer to use their gut instinct or to rely on luck!
• Men are almost twice as likely to trust Government business advice schemes than women.  Men are 10% more likely to trust the bank than women.
• Entrepreneurs in London and the West Midlands are most likely to consider crowd lending. When it comes to equity those in London and the North East are most likely to consider using it.
• Only 10% of companies in London do not need funding.  In Wales 45% don’t need it!
• Is it a Celtic thing?  At least half of entrepreneurs in Scotland, the North East, Northern Ireland, the South West and Wales rely on intuition and/or gut instinct to make business decisions.  And interestingly no-one in the survey who was from Northern Ireland believed in luck!
• Almost 60% of entrepreneurs in the North East like to back their friends and people they know; in the West Midlands a mere 16% would.

Overall what the Funding Knight research has shown is that crowd lending is something entrepreneurs are well aware of and it is much less niche than you might think.  Everyone is talking about it and a large minority are fundraising through it.  People trust the crowd and do not need to know a company well to back it, but it is nice when they do.  Both women and men love crowd lending in pretty equal measure but women are marginally more likely to use it, partly because they are more confident online and in the context of social networking than me. Professional advisers should put their weight behind it as soon as possible because their clients are increasingly wanting to opt for it, or at least consider it very seriously.

And I suppose the lesson to me is that I should finish this article now so I can login and pop some money into crowd lending as soon as possible!