Each year thousands of companies start out on their journey towards becoming a success…or at least that’s the dream anyway. The UK is leading the way in terms of producing startups in europe with various forms of financial assistance available to help them get off the ground and management who have undertaken significant amounts of training either through first-hand business experience or by undertaking business-related degrees at University.

There are all kinds of reasons why people choose to start their own companies. These include just generally wanting to work for themselves, spotting a gap in the market that they can capitalise on, a dream to run their own business and just not wanting to be bossed around anymore. Whatever the factor, it’s not a decision that is made lightly or overnight.

Not just anyone can go off and start a business, it takes a significant amount of planning before you’re in a position to open your doors to the public. Without a solid plan in place with various contingencies to help to cover any unexpected problems that arise, you’re always going to be up against it and struggling to receive any financial backing.

It’s the money behind the business in the early days that will help you to not only open, but thrive upon doing so. There will be times when the company isn’t making money and you’re doing nothing but spending on either stock, premises or staffing; and you’re having to rely on bank or guarantor loans to pay for the essentials until the regular income starts flowing.

If you’ve done your research, and you should always be researching how to develop your business as a whole not just the initial concept; then it’s time to start thinking about where your money is going to come from to get it going.

As mentioned, you can’t just expect customers to start paying for your goods or services – you need to market the business first. Sure there are plenty of ways of doing this for free or with very little investment. Facebook and Twitter are two great ways of reaching out to audiences and with their paid advertisements you can target specific users or demographics that fit your target audience.

For example, you could serve your ads specifically to men aged between 18 and 25 living in the south of England with an interest in cricket. This way you are much more likely to hit your target audience as opposed to wasting your budget advertising to the world, or England specifically.

You will also need the help of an accountant, whether it’s someone who works for a firm or someone with the necessary qualifications who can assist you as and when they’re required, like the end of the tax year. With enough of your own work to focus on trying to develop the business, marketing and advertising, selling, attending exhibitions and conferences, meeting suppliers, whatever it might be; you don’t have the time to keep an eye on where the funds are going.

Employing the services of an accountant will help you to budget for the whole financial year (April to March) so that you are always in control and someone is analysing the worthwhile and costly investments.

Finally, you need to seek the help of an investor of some kind. Many businesses will look to family or friends to help them out (similarly to the previously mentioned guarantor loans) while others will ask for the help of their bank to supplement them with the money they need to get started.

HSBC have just announced that they will be handing out as much as £8 billion to startups in the UK in the coming months and that’s the kind of help you need to be looking for (unless you can get the guys off Dragon’s Den on-board of course!)