Quel est l'impact de l'apparition des nouveaux acteurs de financement et des aides régionales sur les choix de financement des jeunes entreprises en Wallonie ?

Abstract

The creation of new companies is a very important point for the economy of a country. This is why many European countries are giving a huge boost to this branch of the economy. However, in a country such as Belgium, we note that the rate of business creation is low, so it is worth asking why this is the case and what problems entrepreneurs might face. The most recurring problem in an entrepreneurial venture is finding financing. When it is reasonable to say that there is a slowdown in formal venture capital market activity, crowdfunding and less formal venture capital activities such as business angels are emerging around the world and banks still play a major role in financing new small businesses or new projects in entities. However, in Wallonia, help from the government has been given abundantly. In order to understand more the impacts of the new actors of entrepreneurial finance and the help of the Walloon government, we met with specialists in the financing of start-ups. These people, working mainly in financing structures or incubators, gave us their opinion on the theories gathered and shared their expertise. At the same time, we collected, via an online questionnaire, the testimonies of a number of entrepreneurs, which enabled us to analyse the correlations to be distinguished between the different findings. Our work provides also an overview on the entrepreneurial finance actors in Wallonia. The main objective of this dissertation is to understand to what extent aid and new financing players were present on the market for the financing of start-ups. At the end of the work, we have to admit that the crowdfunding hasn’t impacted much the field and that the aids are impacting tremendously the entrepreneurial finance world in a lot of aspects. Finally, we hope that our work will give a better overview on the financing alternatives to the entrepreneurs in need.