"I think you want to beware of declaring sea changes in our national history on the basis of five years of evidence." -- William S. Rukeyser
I spoke with William Rukeyser, the managing editor of Fortune, just as he was preparing that magazine's annual listing of the 500 largest industrial corporations in America.
Putting together the Fortune 500 is an annual reminder that yesterday's little entrepreneurial companies -- Apple Computer, Advanced Micro Devices, and so forth -- are now very much part of what used to be thought of as the old-line industries of our country. This period has been a time of the fastest growth in recent American history and the greatest creation of jobs. There's just no question that the outcropping of new businesses and new products is a sign of intense health in American society.
Still, I think you want to beware of declaring sea changes in our national history on the basis of five years of evidence. I don't expect any of those things to go away, but neither do I expect all companies to be small, all workplaces to be garages, and all millionaires to be under 25.
"I wanted the paper to say, 'Hey, new people are doing it all over the place." -- Mike Russell
Mike Russell publishes The Kansas City Business Journal, concentrating on small business and the entrepreneur.
I had no intention of starting a newspaper. Then a fellow came to see me and said, "Kansas City needs a business journal." I said, "What the hell is a business journal?" So he gave me a year's supply of The St. Louis Business Journal, and I sat down one weekend and read them. And when I got through I said, "God, how exciting that town is -- and I thought it was just a decaying city."
Kansas City has historically had a real negative attitude about itself. People would stand around at cocktail parties and say things like, "Well, you see, Charlie's been trying to do so and so, and he'll be lucky if he doesn't fall on his butt." All that negative bullshit. Well, I live here; I knew it wasn't so. And I had begun to get a sense of the emerging younger businessman who wasn't going to wait his turn anymore. That's what's happening in this country today, nobody's waiting their turn. The old establishments, the establishment companies, all that's passe, although they don't know it yet. I wanted the paper to say, "Hey, new people are doing it all over the place. And they're winning."
When we first started publishing, people would say to me, "Boy, this is great, but what are you going to write about next week?" You could easily do a 200-page weekly business journal here, if you tried to cover everything that needs to be covered.
"Entrepreneurs used to be next in line to pirates and outlaws. Now they are the new role models." -- Steven Brandt
Steven Brandt, a Stanford Graduate School of Business professor, is the author of Entrepreneuring in Established Companies.
Entrepreneurs in general used to be next in line to pirates and outlaws. But that's no longer the case; they are center stage, the new role models. That's true even in a place like Stanford Business School.
I think entrepreneurs are different from what they used to be, however. The old notion of the entrepreneur in his hair shirt, rolling the dice and mortgaging the house, is like talking about cowboys being John Wayne. It is just not so. Out here on the coast, they are a relatively professional class. They know cash flow, they understand marketing channels and market segmentation. But it's not just happening in Silicon Valley. The fact is, you can't name a business anywhere that can't be improved with some ingenuity and some technology, whether it is flower shops or garages.
"I figured in this country, everybody is running businesses." -- Youa Her
Youa Her hardly owns your average grocery store. Asianfood, such as sweet rice and bamboo shoots, fills the shelves of Zuag's Gift and Grocery Shop, and the traditional art stitchery of her fellow Hmong tribeswomen lines the walls. She fled the fighting in Laos in 1975, and a refugee-relief group found her a home in chilly Wausau, Wis. Then she, too, joined the age of the entrepreneur. She picked me up at the airport in her van, and we talked in the back room of the store.
I figured that in this country, everybody is running businesses. We can go without money for a little bit, but not without food. That is what made me come to start a grocery business.
Second, I was thinking of arts. I thought of the Hmong women doing needlework, helping them sell a little bit. If you don't do this, what is going to happen? Maybe 5 years, 10 years in the future, our children will have nothing to look at.
I didn't know what to do, so I went to the Chamber of Commerce and got some little brochures to read, but then it was too much and too confusing. I thought, why don't I do it my way instead? I went to St. Paul, Minn., and talked to the people at the Hmong food store there. I said, You loan me food at 10% less than retail and I'll pay you back; but your money can move faster because you sell in Wausau and St. Paul. They loaned the merchandise, about $11,000 worth, which I sold in only three months, and I covered all $11,000 back to them. Now all the merchandise I have left in the shelves is my profit.
The fun part is that everyone said, "You must be a genius!" "How do you do this?" "It seems so difficult." And I say, no, it's simple. The women enjoy bringing their things here, and the community enjoys getting the food. That is part of the fun. The community put me in the papers and said that even though I started a little tiny business like this, I decorated their town.
