Statistics Reinforce Enormous Potential For Commercial Barter Industry

In May 2005 the published results of the sixth annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor showed that “Seventy-three million people across the globe are either nascent entrepreneurs or own or manage a young business.”

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, directed by the London Business School and Babson College, is the largest annual measure of entrepreneurial activity worldwide, spanning 34 countries and a total labor force of 784 million people. (In 2004, 11.3% of the U.S. adult population were entrepreneurs while in the U.K. the percentage was 6.3%, and in Germany 4.5%.)

Entrepreneurs are the backbone of the world economic community. Yet many failures are due to lack of capital. If the world expects to survive and prosper economically it needs to increase the availability of capital to the undercapitalized global entrepreneurial community.

And that may well be the most valuable service our industry can provide to millions of entrepreneurs—showing them the way to use their products and services as a secondary form of capital.

Our industry has made substantial progress over the decades, but viewed in the larger context of what’s possible it can be safely said that we’ve barely scratched the surface of the incredible possibilities!

More importantly, the business model needed to build a critical mass of clients/members, which will number in the millions, is yet to be created.

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