Everybody Wants In
Fortune Small Business Magazine:
Once upon a time, small business was seen solely as the domain of idiosyncratic, iconoclastic outsiders, willing to forgo the security of corporate life to venture out on their own.
But today entrepreneurs are America’s role models. Almost everyone wants to own a business—from college students, who are signing up for entrepreneurial courses in record numbers; to those over age 65, who are forming more companies every year; to recent immigrants, who in 2005 started 25% more companies per capita than native-born citizens did.
We are in the midst of the largest entrepreneurial surge this country has ever seen. According to Small Business Administration projections, nearly 672,000 new companies with employees were created in 2005.
That is the biggest business birthrate in U.S. history: 30,000 more startups than in 2004, and 12% more than at the height of dot-com hysteria in 1996. And the trend shows no sign of abating.
This trend is of course flattering to established entrepreneurs: They were small before it was beautiful. But what does it mean in dollars and cents? A world full of new competitors—and new opportunities.
All these nascent businesses require services, technology, and expertise—demands that have launched an echo boom of small businesses seeking to serve other small businesses.
“It’s such a huge market,” says Gourab Nanda, 34, who started MyBusinessAssistant.com last year to provide virtual business-management solutions to small companies. “All you have to do is identify your customers, provide the services, and keep prices low.”
Photo by MSDesigns.
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