“People have lost their jobs, had to search for additional work or new
work and they haven’t been able to find it because of the recession,”
said Allio, who estimates a 20 percent increase in necessity driven
start-ups.
“If you can start at a low point, your business plan is probably ... strong,” said Devin Cole, ONEin3 Boston manager. metro
Starting a business isn’t easy these days, but maybe that’s why entrepreneurs fresh out of school are taking the gutsy first step.
“Generally speaking, young people have a lot more appetite and tolerance for the risk associated with a new venture,” said Mark Allio, regional director for the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network.
Allio estimates that a new entrepreneur has a 50 percent chance of lasting longer than four years.
“I took a huge risk, but it’s a fun risk,” said Dan Dietz, 22. Dietz created Olejo Incorporated, a database design company for e-commerce Web sites, with Justin Aronstein in the spring of 2008. “If you have an understanding and a vision and you enjoy what you’re doing, it limits the fear.”
Michel Lutfi, 25, co-owner of Temptations Café, finds delegation a necessity to his family’s business, which was started in 2001 in Brookline and expanded in 2006 to a second location on Huntington Avenue. Michel and his brothers — Lou, 28, and Nassib, 23 — run the two different locations while their mother and father do the behind the scenes work such as daily food preparation and paperwork.
“It was a big risk and a lot of hard work,” said Lutfi.