The first lockdown was a weird time. While some of us were baking banana bread or sourdough bread, others started meme stock trading or a side hustle. Count me into the latter camp. While the markets were crashing, I wanted to find a way to inform friends what was happening in the business world. So in true start-up fashion, I started a newsletter called Smart Casual.

What started as a side project during a time I had to scratch my other businesses (a fashion label), has now become a boutique publishing house. Smart Casual is one of many businesses that started during the pandemic.

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The global crisis changed how  we work; many took the plunge  to quit their job and found a company.

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Therefore, the past two years have brought a boom in new start-ups. In the US, new business applications rose by 44 percent from 2019 to 2022.

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The European Patent Office reported a new record number  of applications in 2022,  indicating that innovation is  still going strong.

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In recent months though, many start-ups were hit by the economic downturn, causing less funding or so-called down-rounds and mass layoffs. This climate is not considered founder-friendly anymore and it also means that many people have to find new jobs or even new careers.

As with the start of the pandemic though, the present challenges could again help foster entrepreneurship in Europe and the US.

Studies show that early-stage funding is particularly impacted, which led to many founders bootstrapping their business. This is not a bad approach per se, but entrepreneurs need to show more grit than ever. On the other hand, investors can help in more ways than just investing money.

Those who’ve built businesses before and have gone through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship can help guide new business owners through this watershed.

We need to make sure that we don’t lose those underrepresented in the start-up ecosystem already. A recent study by the German Ifo Instutite suggests that the gender gap in new business owners is widening. Now is the time to build, but we need to ensure that new businesses are not hitting a dead end and can thrive even in challenging times.

Smart Casual is a daily newsletter about business and tech by Elisabeth Oberndorfer. Subscribe at: smartcasual.at

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