Business advice needs to get better in order to save millions of jobs for the future.

New forecasts released by The Crowdfunding Centre show that if modernisation of business advice is successful in bringing seed crowdfunding into the mainstream this could add around half a million jobs (497,000) per year within ten years.

“Current advice being offered by both business advisers and the education system is simply so outdated as to be failing people. Unless this is remedied soon it will cost us many thousands, even millions of jobs and livelihoods in the years to come,” warns Crowdfunding Centre founder Barry James, who explains: Technology has changed the nature of jobs and work, so the economy has changed; but education and advice have not.

“The gig economy is just one part of this. The Internet has opened the economy up in a new way, never before possible, for ordinary people to start and run their own businesses and create their own livelihoods. It’s time to adapt; the alternative is unthinkable in terms of inequality, poverty and underemployment.”

Surveys clearly show that many people are attracted to entrepreneurship, wanting to start their own business and become their own boss, but when they seek advice the knowledge of new funding sources and models is lacking, and older ones are inadequate.

Given the growing level of general indebtedness banks are usually unwilling or unable to help get businesses off the ground and to the stage where investors can take an interest. Yet advice, from either source, does not yet encompass one of the major sources of funding now available: crowdfunding.

“If we fix the advice problem, the effect over the coming years will be dramatic. Based on the data we have analysed more than a million new jobs a year depend on getting this advice right.

“In the UK alone that could mean up to 200,000 new jobs each year – none of them funded by central government. That’s a substantial sunrise industry worthy of proper recognition and support, by any standard.

“Worldwide the impact could be even bigger.”