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.
What's good, though, is that if your business has that kind of story, people really want to hear it. In my company, for instance, we've always been trying to prove a real business model, and now people want to hear what we've really done--the ups and downs, the pitfalls, what we've learned. We lay it out. It's real. And there's a whole new appreciation for that kind of approach. Which makes all the difference."
Joseph E. Fergus, CEO, COMTek, Chantilly, Va.
Number 33
Because no one is against "the ownership society" anymore. Republican or Democrat, right wing or left, the term has become just a part of the language--and now everyone in government feels pressure to get behind it. Putting everyone, from all sides, on the side that's yours.
Number 34
The rise of entrepreneurship education. Classes proliferate. Programs proliferate. Demand for teaching exceeds the supply of teachers. At the university level, funded chairs in entrepreneurship are being established faster than they can be filled.
Number 35
Because a brilliant program called the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship--the brainchild of onetime schoolteacher Steve Mariotti 20 years ago--has thrived. Businesses are being built by kids. More than 100,000 of them.
Number 36
Money. Venture funding is up, angel investing is up, private equity backing is more available, even big corporations are putting more resources into VC-like research and development programs. There's capital out there. It needs you.
Number 37
EBay--which has provided millions of people with a real-time, honest-money correspondence course in market economics. (And made it fun.)
Number 38
jetBlue.
Number 39
StartupNation, a weekly syndicated radio show for entrepreneurs.
Number 40
Because entrepreneurship is a way out, a way through. In processing interviews in New York City Family Court, kids still say they want most to be NBA basketball players--but the second most commonly stated goal is "to be an entrepreneur."
Number 41
Because one-to-one marketing still works better for small businesses than big ones.
