Last months Budget saw Alistair Darling highlight particular considerations for small to medium sized tech start-ups:

"To address under-provision of venture capital for technology and high-growth businesses, the Government launched Enterprise Capital Funds. Over the last decade we have seen providers of development capital moving further away from smaller investments. As set out in Building Britain's Future: New Industry, New jobs, the government will launch a review to consider whether, and in what form, further intervention could increase the supply of long-term growth capital to small and medium sized businesses."

This is surely good news for tech start-ups at a time when the Government is predicting a 3.5% decline in the UK economy by the end of 2009.  However, for those undeterred by such gloomy statistics, will be cheered by the announcement of a  £2.5 billion fund to encourage investment in the ‘high skilled jobs of the future’.

With these initial considerations in place, the Chancellor announced yet more good news in the form of millions of pounds worth of extra funding to implement broadband networks in even the most remote of UK locations.  Available to hi-tech businesses, the aim of the fund is to establish a 2 Megabits per second connection by the end of 2012.  It will be interesting over the coming years to see how this provision will affect the rate of online start-ups.

With green technology hailed as one of the ‘big growth areas in the next few years’, industry professionals are surely questioning whether 2009 will see an influx of well funded hi-tech green businesses.