Symantec announced the findings of a landmark study it commissioned from Forrester Consulting, which reveals that the leaders of small businesses launched during the Great Recession are dramatically different than those who launched their company prior to 2008. The recent recession put millions of people out of work or threatened their employment. It also ravaged the home equity and retirement accounts of countless recently retired professionals, leaving them to wonder whether they walked out of their previous employer through a one-way door to financial ruin. These unprecedented economic shockwaves spawned a new breed of entrepreneur: the accidental entrepreneur-- defined as a company founder who started his or her small businesses out of pure necessity rather than a lifelong dream of “being their own boss.” These accidental entrepreneurs are agile, highly educated, tech-savvy and battle-tested business professionals and the companies they founded and will found are born to grow.

1. Accidental Entrepreneur
June 13, 2012
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 1

2. The Accidental
Entrepreneur is
NOT a Theory
Anymore
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 2

3. Business Creation Up during and after Great Recession
• Great Recession caused unprecedented business death AND unprecedented
business birth
• 60,000 more new businesses were created per month in 2009 than in 2007
• Trend Continues…70,000 more per month in 2010, and 50,000 more per
month in 2011
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 3
Source: Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity 1996-2011, March 2012

4. Research Methodology
• Survey performed by Forrester Consulting
• 305 U.S. SMBs (3 to 250 employees)
– 50/50 split among companies founded pre- and post-2008
• Company executive or IT decision maker
• Cross industry
Objective:
Understand the differences – with respect to technology adoption/
utilization /consumption models – between SMBs started since 2008
as a result of the recession (accidental entrepreneurs) and those
started prior to 2008.
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 4

5. Who is the Accidental Entrepreneur?
• Laid off from white collar job
• Returning from war
• The “newly unretired”
• Stay-at-home spouses
• Not just “old economy”
• White collar, tech-savvy professionals at the peak of
their career
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 5

6. How are Accidental Entrepreneurs different?
Key Findings
• Driven by profits not passion
• Bullish about growth
• Take dramatic and immediate advantage of the cloud
• Better prepared to scale security
• More self-sufficient in making software decisions
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 6
Source: “The Accidental Entrepreneur,” Forrester Custom Research prepared for Symantec, May 2012

7. Profits not passion drive post-2008 small businesses
• 54% of SBs founded post-2008 have an exit strategy(15% higher)
• 34% of founders of SBs since 2008 come from large enterprises (500+
employee)
• 35% left their large employers due to the recession
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 7
Source: “The Accidental Entrepreneur,” Forrester Custom Research prepared for Symantec, May 2012

8. Growing faster than traditional small businesses
• Four times as many Accidental Entrepreneurs expect to double their number
of employees in the next two years
• 75% expect revenue to grow more than 10 percent in the next year
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 8
Source: “The Accidental Entrepreneur,” Forrester Custom Research prepared for Symantec, May 2012

9. Trust more applications to the cloud
• 21% of Accidental Entrepreneurs have zero servers and 35% have 3+ servers
– Sophisticated IT infrastructure; four times more likely to build in the cloud
• 51% deploy cloud software
– 26% have implemented cloud security vs. 16% of pre-2008
• All SBs aggressively adopting cloud storage and backup
– 32% post-2008 and 29% of pre-2008
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 9
Source: “The Accidental Entrepreneur,” Forrester Custom Research prepared for Symantec, May 2012

10. Better prepared to scale security for growth
• Turn to the cloud more for endpoint, network firewall, email and web
security
• 27% more confident that their current security solution will scale
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 10
Source: “The Accidental Entrepreneur,” Forrester Custom Research prepared for Symantec, May 2012

11. More self-sufficient in making software decisions
• Base software decisions on what the
founder used in their previous job or as a
consumer (across all software types)
• Strongly prefer known brands
• Extremely less likely than pre-recession
SBs to rely on VAR recommendation for
collaboration and security software
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 11
Source: “The Accidental Entrepreneur,” Forrester Custom Research prepared for Symantec, May 2012

12. Accidental Entrepreneurs Are
Velociraptors Feasting On The Herd
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 12

13. Conclusions
• Accidental Entrepreneurs:
– Are growing significantly faster and at the expense of less technically-
confident, less agile, less ‘connected’ small business owner
– Are mostly “Enterprise-like” or “Cutting Edge” companies
– Are very likely to acquire “consumer technology” at retail and then seek
to modify it as their needs become more complex
– Need simple, easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage solutions that can keep
pace as they quickly scale their company
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 13

14. Thank you!
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the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
This document is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advertising. All warranties relating to the information in this document, either express or implied,
are disclaimed to the maximum extent allowed by law. The information in this document is subject to change without notice.
The Accidental Entrepreneur is REAL and Forever Changing the SMB Market 14