Its very easy to believe that starting a business depends on having funds that can be borrowed from a commercial setting and of course that  sometimes can be a necessary aspect for a business. The company I work for gets a phone call every week or two from either someone wanting to loan us money, or from someone wanting to know if loans would help us grow the business or occasionally from someone offering to help us to sell the business now that it is reasonably successful. The reality is for many businesses, loans are not necessary and indeed we have never borrowed money from a bank. We install equipment that we buy from suppliers who after the first couple of transactions gave us credit and if we ask our clients to make a payment at the beginning of the process to help improve the cashflow (and to gain their commitment) then the only issues to deal with are working accommodation for the workers which in the beginning was house based and the wages which at the beginning was based on a self employed basis. We also began by working as contractors for other businesses in the same sector as ours and through that learned a great deal of good and bad practices. The business we worked with most at the beginning went out of business many years ago and we have continued to grow using our own approach and ideas. Thank you Tony for your helpful advice and for the hard work you apply to promoting micro enterprises. I was proud when several years ago we moved from being a micro business to becoming an entry level small business as we employed the 10th worker and we now have 13 so we are continuing to grow!