Opportunity or necessity? What our data says about why Syrians start businesses

The question

Why does this question matter?

For years, researchers have split entrepreneurship into two kinds: opportunity entrepreneurship, when someone starts a business because they see a market need they can meet, and necessity entrepreneurship, when someone starts because they have no other way to earn a living.

The split may sound academic, but it changes everything about how we support people. An opportunity founder usually needs finance, a network and a wider market. A necessity founder first needs a steady income, and simple tools that turn a small activity into a business that can last. If we get the diagnosis wrong, we offer accelerator programmes to people looking for their daily bread, or "from idea to project" workshops to people who passed that stage long ago.

So I decided to answer the question from our own data, not from impressions. We have three sources: what people said when we asked them, what they do in their businesses, and what they discuss among themselves.

What they do

What does practice say?

In the first edition of the Entrepreneurship Observatory we read data on 795 people from the entrepreneurial community, 338 of them with a running business, a prototype or an idea they are actively building. These figures speak to our question:

• 76% sell through social media, and only 2% through online marketplaces.
• 80% say their biggest challenge is better marketing and sales, and 78% reaching more customers.
• 66% are looking for partners or investors.

And in other data we collected over the same period:

• Among those who stated their work status, about 36% described themselves as employees, and 7% as looking for work. A large part of the entrepreneurial community holds a job alongside its business or idea.
• In an e-commerce workshop, 23% of those who registered said they were learning to get a job in the field, not to launch a business.

These are not the features of opportunity entrepreneurship as textbooks describe it. Selling over WhatsApp and Instagram, a business on the side of a job, learning to get hired: all of these look more like strategies for survival and for adding a second income.

Around us

What does the picture look like in similar countries?

The global question changed

For years the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) asked: did you start because you saw an opportunity, or because you had no better choice for work? But this either-or split stopped being enough, because many people hold both motives at once. So since its 2019/2020 report, GEM asks about four motives, and people can agree with more than one: to make a difference in the world, to build great wealth or a very high income, to continue a family tradition, and "to earn a living because jobs are scarce". In most of the 50 economies surveyed that year, more than half of new entrepreneurs agreed with the last one.

Our neighbours

• Jordan: in 2025, more than eight in ten new entrepreneurs agreed they started to earn a living because jobs are scarce. In the 2023/2024 national report, only 20 to 27% named "making a difference in the world", and Jordan was highest on earning a living compared with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
• Saudi Arabia: in 2025, more than four in five new entrepreneurs agreed with each of the two motives, earning a living and building wealth, even in a rich economy.
• Egypt: in 2025, four in five people starting a business agreed with one of the two material motives: earning a living or building wealth.

Compare these numbers with our 7%. The gap is too large to be real. When the motive is asked as "what inspired you?" in a membership form for a tech union, people choose the nicer story. When the same person is asked whether they agree they started because jobs are scarce, the answer is usually yes.

Post-conflict economies

• In a study of 91 countries between 2001 and 2018, Naudé, Amorós and Brück (2023) found that necessity-driven start-up activity in countries in conflict is close to double the rate in other countries (4.75% against 2.46% of adults). They also found that entrepreneurship holds up better where unemployment is lower and finance is easier to get.
• In Bosnia and Herzegovina after the war, a World Bank and University of Glasgow study found that wealthier households were better able to start businesses that lasted and created jobs, that a bank relationship was linked to a business surviving, and that micro-credit helped people in informal work become successful entrepreneurs.
• In Kosovo, Williams and Vorley (2017) found that the break with old institutions opened the door to entrepreneurship, but most activity stayed small and local, with a limited effect on economic growth.

When members of our group discussed in January 2025 which experiences we should learn from, they named Jordan, because it set up a government body to support entrepreneurs, and Rwanda, because it "went through conditions very similar to ours". The members were looking for this comparison before we wrote it.