

Start-up activity now higher than during Dotcom boom - adamhowell
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/despite-recession-us-entrepreneurial-activity-rate-rises-in-2009.aspx

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pge
I wonder how much increased startup activity is a result of increased
unemployment. I would speculate that startup activity peaks in the best of
times (when people have strong financial resources and high degree of
certainty that they can find another job is their startup fails) and in the
worst of times (when you get laid off and don't have job prospects, you have
no choice but to dust off the business plan that's been sitting on your desk
waiting to be acted on).

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DaniFong
These are new small businesses, not startups, specifically. They are the
restaurants, catering services, print shops, laundromats, and interior design
firms taking up the strip malls of the world. By the metrics used San Jose
would rank as rather non-entrepreneurial, because there are many larger, fast
growing startup companies, and fewer small businesses.

It's not a value judgment, but they're different things.

Chinatowns across the USA are exceptionally entrepreneurial, but mostly people
own small shops. They are not making new things or business models, just
running something that's already worked before as well as they can.

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Perceval
It will be interesting to see if startups born in a global credit crunch will
do better than the dotcoms born in an easy credit bubble.

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ziadbc
Other than the outliers, things like like Yahoo or Amazon that were created
during .com days, I can't see how you wouldn't do better today then back then.
In my opinion, having something like heroku exist as a resource to your
startup is like someone handing you a million dollars in funding 10 years ago.
Its almost absurd what we can do with small teams these days.

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joelhaus
Carl Schramm, President and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, was interviewed on
Charlie Rose last night. Had some interesting statistics and thoughts on the
relationship between politics, culture and entrepreneurship:

<http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/6897>

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kragen
When I visited Perú in 2006, I was really impressed with the level of
entrepreneurial activity. Every downtown street in every city was bustling
with entrepreneurs. I had entrepreneurs walking up to me everywhere to try to
sell me stuff. I couldn't walk down the street without entrepreneurs honking
at me in case I wanted a ride in their taxi. My wife finally gave up and wore
earplugs whenever we went outside.

This is a result of Perú's economy being a giant crater in the ground.

I suspect that what's happening is that the US is becoming more like Perú.

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davidedicillo
I might be wrong, but I think it's mostly because at that time people was
driven by the possibility of making money in a more, at the time, profitable
industry. Now a great number of startups are created by people that, once lay
off, decided to give it a shot.

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redorb
since doing a startup isn't a zero-sum game; the market for startups has been
growing since the crash was 10 years ago; I would hope we would have fully
recovered to previous levels and then exceeded by now

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble>

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csmeder
I wonder what percentage of these start ups wouldn't exist if it wasn't for PG
writings?

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csmeder
Down voting me, Kinda harsh? I am not saying PG is the only reason people
people are pursuing a startup, but I would argue he is responsible for giving
some people the fortitude to go through with it.

For example, before reading PG's essays, even as a child I knew I wanted to be
an inventor. Later in 6th grade my dad joined a start up as computer engineer
(around 1997) and I was able to go to work with him on many occasions. This
combined with the invention of the World Wide Web and home computers, resulted
in me knowing I wanted to start a company that made internet applications.
However, if it wasn't for Paul's writings I don't know if I would have had the
fortitude to follow it through to the the point where I am now. I think a lot
of other people can identify with this.

