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Gen Z Business boom

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More aspiring Gen Z entrepreneurs are launching their own businesses at scale, new data has found. Your Company Formations, which has helped more than a million entrepreneurs in business, says that more than one in ten of the company directors registered by them so far this year are under 25 and, for the first time, under-25s are starting companies at the same rate as their share of the adult population.

The figures, drawn from over 10,000 director records held by Your Company Formations since the start of the year (part of a wider dataset of over 128,000 director records) show that 10.6% of directors registered between January and August 2026 were under 25, up from 8.4% in the years before the pandemic. The data also shows that many Gen Z are registering businesses linked to clothing, e-commerce, beauty and digital: with a third of under-25s opting to give their company a one-word name.

  • Accountants: are you seeing evidence of this?
  • HRs and recruiters - could there be an element of necessity at play here given the punitive tax environment meaning employers aren't hiring? Or the adoption of AI?
  • AI experts - has AI made it so much easier to turn an idea into reality very quickly?
  • And business owners generally - Is this encouraging? Does it suggest a birighter future for UK plc?

Any other thoughts, send them across by 08:00 tomorrow.

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Editor
Robert Engeham0
For ten years and for hundreds of thousands of customers, the typical person starting a company with us has been in their late thirties, but now starting a company has stopped being something you do at a particular age.

There are fewer 18 to 24-year-olds in Britain than before the pandemic, but more of them are starting companies. They are founding at the same rate as everyone else, and Gen Z is creating a business boom. They’re building studios, clothing brands, and e-commerce stores, often at 11 pm on a Sunday, around another job. It’s a sign that side hustle culture is booming, but with more of this age group starting a business, it’s important to flag that whilst you can start a business in a weekend, it’s still important to remember to keep up to date with your requirements as a business owner, like filling out the necessary paperwork and your confirmation statements, or they could quickly fall foul of hefty fines. "