Recession a Good Time to be Entrepreneurial
Echoing some of the optimistic statements we heard at last month's Venture Forum Conference is this piece from Forbes magazine that says recessions are usually great times to start a small business, and that this recession might be better than most:
Recessions are arguably the best time to start a business. Certainly the roster of recession-founded companies contains some illustrious names, among them the Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people ), Johnson and Johnson (nyse: JNJ - news - people ) and a raft of tech companies including Cisco Systems (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ), Compaq, Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ).
And this may prove to be the best recession of all to start a business. Not only is human capital cheap and plentiful--one positive side effect of rising unemployment--but also the two defining trends of the decade--digitalization and globalization--mean it has never been as possible to start a business with so little financial capital. Given the credit crunch, that is a fortunate happenstance, of course.
More on why now's as good a time -- or maybe better -- as any here.