Eight in ten entrepreneurs are optimistic about their own business prospects for the coming year and half of this group are ‘very optimistic’ about the next twelve months, according to Smith & Williamson’s first quarterly survey of the enterprise sector.

Start up Loans, the £112 million Government scheme created to help young people to start their own business, has now supported its 1000th young entrepreneur.

Vin Murria - AIM Awards Entrepreneur of the Year 2012 and founder of a company with a £200 million market cap, is to support Fredericks Foundation’s annual fundraising initiative ‘Trading Places’ and live on £71 for a week from 1st March 2013.

Were you born to become an entrepreneur and start your own business? And is 'entrepreneurial spirit' something certain people just have an instinct for it, or can it be developed? We thought we would ask two self-made millionaires who started out from very different situations, what their views are and what finally motivated their decision to take the plunge.

Entrepreneur Country has teamed up with crowdfunding platform Crowdcube to help telecommunications start-up OVIVO Mobile gain funding.

IT infrastructure is something that no company can do without yet it competes with a myriad of other demands for investment, especially in the current economy and so must constantly prove its worth.

The sliding of one computing era into another is not something that people would imagine seeing in the street, on public transport or in a coffee shop. However, when the incoming era is mobility, it’s exactly where it is most prevalent. Those telltale devices are at the forefront of a trend that is seeing the consumerisation of IT within even the most traditional of large organisations. Consumers – and those very same people while at work – now expect technology to help them live their lives on their own terms.

As we look forward to 2013, a topic that continues to be on everyone’s lips is bring your own device (BYOD), the associated network issues and perceived security risks to an organisation. But has the consumerisation of IT led to other changes within corporate systems beyond the device that employees choose to use?

At Entrepreneur Country we are proud to name Santander Breakthrough as our partner. While we work together to champion entrepreneurship across the UK, the programme is also committed to providing up to £200 million in growth capital to a vital yet commonly underfunded UK business sector.

Silicon Valley Internship Program (SVIP), a new consortium of start-ups and industry organisations led by Michael Hughes, co-CEO of LoopUp, has announced its initiative to inspire entrepreneurialism in the UK. Its program will offer select, recent computer science and software engineering graduates a year’s experience in Silicon Valley, the quintessential hub for entrepreneurship and start-ups.