Startup Activity Highest In A Decade

Posted by ShawnHessinger under Startups
From http://www.huffingtonpost.com 5093 days ago

Would it surprise you to learn that startup activity in the U.S. is at it's highest point in 14 years even topping the activity during the famed DotCom boom? A report from the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity relates this very fascinating statistic and raises questions (at least in some minds) about whether we really need to use more tax payer money to encourage loans for small business.

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Written by yoni67
5092 days ago

Shawn,

I don't think you are going out on such a big limb, rather I think your thinking makes a huge amount of practical sense. It is the time for bootstrappers and independents. In most fields, gone are the days of huge expenditures on office space, equipment and the like. So many businesses can now start out with two simple things: a PC and a lot of desire. With a blog, inexpensive advertising, networking and building from scratch a business can take off. These are truly the times for good old Yankee ingenuity and survival of the fittest. Darwin gave organsims three choices: adapt, migrate or perish. Adapting or migrating to a viable field are great options to ensure survival. Perishing is also an option unfortunately, but it is time to make sure that when a business fails, it doesn't do so with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of grants and loans and with an owner who has no way of paying the money back! Great post and great follow-up point!

Yoni

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Written by ShawnHessinger
5092 days ago

Yonatan,

I'm going way out on a limb here, but the interesting thing to me in these statistics is that all of this is happening at a time when Washington claims banks are not lending. Hence the need for more federal funds for the banking system to stimulate lending. But, when you think about it, if the banks aren't funding this activity and the VC and angel crowd who we're often told account for a much smaller portion of the ecosystem, aren't responsible for it, what does that leave? I'd say bootstrappers, people like you and me, who start a business with little or no overhead or investment and grow their business with good old fashioned cash flow. My question to politicians would be, isn't this a good thing and do we really need to introduce more tax dollars into the system further inflating the national debt on one side of the equation while encouraging small businesses on the other to go further into debt instead of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps and generating more revenue? I know it's the hard way to do it, but isn't the hard way the best and most responsible way sometimes?

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Written by yoni67
5093 days ago

Shawn,

Amazing and optimistic statistics! Looks like a lot of laid-off folks from big companies are now finding themselves owners in the small business sphere. In a way it's good, but it will also make things more competitive and make access to funding tighter.

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