At the height of the technology bubble new incubators were springing up almost weekly as entrepreneurs created a new market. These firms have been forced to re-evaluate their business models over recent months, as the economic downturn takes its toll.

NanoUniverse, the Anglo-American internet incubator, succumbed to shareholders' demands to wind up and hand back its cash pile in July, and Antfactory, the global investment firm which lost co-founder Charles Murphy to Deutsche Bank in October, appears to be on a similar path. Bizzbuild, the AIM-listed firm, has only three struggling investments to its name, having sold or closed the rest of its portfolio.