75 Reasons to Be Glad You're an American Entrepreneur Right Now

Tweet

Number 18

Peer groups. More of them. Less formal. Simpler to start (not least because there are simply more peers). The counsel, empathy, and bracing inspiration of veteran fellow travelers can be as close as you decide to arrange it. (Shall we say the local diner, second Tuesday every month?)

Number 19

Because not just your business problems but our social problems, too, are being attacked more and more frequently with entrepreneurship.

Number 20

Because we're not rookies anymore. In 25 years of entrepreneurial expansion we've learned that couples can be partners. There are ways. A whole literature has grown up to help couples circumnavigate the traumas so many early entrepreneurial pairs suffered and thus shape a life that makes real a common and large-hearted dream.

Number 21

Because corporate America's burden of satisfying shortest-term financial performance expectations has never been more crippling.

Number 22

Because even the biggest of the big are copying you. (Watch GE's Jeffrey Immelt trying to turn Jack Welch's cost-efficiency battleship toward risk-taking, market responsiveness, and innovation.) And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Number 23

Because big companies still keep Dilbert in fresh material.

Number 24

Because big companies now ask you a completely different set of questions. Just in the last six or nine months we've been flooded--a fire hose of opportunity. We do virtual concierge services and virtual call centers, so it makes sense we'd see a spike from clients who are focusing more and more on customer retention, customer loyalty programs, capturing more dollars per customer. The spike is partly just dollars loosening up, but it's more than that. When my board asked me, 'Where's this coming from?' I began to register how differently our prospective clients--all big companies--were approaching us. It used to be: 'Are you stable? How little are you? Are you real?' Now that's gone. No one cares. Instead we see in prospects this greater willingness to turn to small companies for innovative ways to address their business processes. They're fascinated, you can feel it in them personally. You'll be on a sales call and they'll be asking, 'What are you doing?' 'What's new?'

They're sending people to study us. There's this greater curiosity to hear from you and learn. We're a point of interest and admiration now."

Mary Naylor, CEO, VIPdesk, Alexandria, Va.

Number 25

Because we're not rookies anymore. In 25 years of entrepreneurial expansion we've learned that it's possible to be a long-haul entrepreneur with a balanced life, not just an unhealthy, self-sacrificing sprinter.

Number 26

The ongoing work of Peter Drucker.

Number 27

The broadbanded, Wi-Fied, video-enabled, international-boundary-eradicating, cost-reducing, market-expanding, ever-stereophonic, and cyber-educating Internet.

Number 28

Because even the government believes in you now. For years an entrepreneurial company competing for governmental contracts was likely to face high hurdles and low interest. The field has become more level. Now you get to play.

Number 29

Because you don't have to be a charismatic leader anymore, whether you happen to actually have charisma or not. You can choose another style. You can be an antiheroic leader; you can give others room to lead; you can be an organizational architect instead.

Number 30

Angels. More of them. More like you. In 2005 there are 225,000 active angel investors, putting $22.5 billion in play (up from $18.1 billion in 2003). In 1996 there were 10 formal angel investment groups; today, at least 200.

Number 31

Because you're not the kind of CEO who's being dragged into court and made into a poster boy (and they are boys) for scandal, greed, and breached ethics. Those are the big-company guys, the guys with the eight-figure golden parachutes, the guys whose antics have nudged public faith even further in the direction of their opposite number: the creator of the new. (Don't blow it.)

Number 32

Because this time experience counts. There was a time you could raise funds simply because you had an idea related to 'dot-com.' And then the bubble burst, and distrust developed. Entrepreneurs were a little suspect. And why not? Everyone felt misled. But that period has run its course; you could feel it fade in the last year and a half or two, and people are now turning to entrepreneurs as the fabric of the economy--the real engine of growth--but in a more measured way this time, which is healthier. Today, you have to have a solid value proposition, plus not just a theory but some experience, some work.

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5  NEXT 

Read more:

Sign-up for our Leadership and Managing Newsletter

Email Address: