Start-up: October 2004 Archives

StartupJournal looks at the growing trend of young mothers combining a stay-at-home lifestyle with entrepreneurial endeavors.

"For many women who leave the work force to care for children, motherhood is making invention a necessity. The daily routine of child-care presents such a minefield of little problems that they turn to tinkering, and then market their brainstorms."

I am seeing this path in more and more of the self-assessments that my students are writing about in my classes. Many are saying that entrepreneurship gives them the freedom to be at home while still pursuing their business aspirations. It will be interesting to see how well these mothers can balance parenting both a new business and young children at the same time.

Anita over at Small Business Trends had more to say about this last week when this article was at the Wall Street Journal's main site. Check out her post and the comments it produced.

When assessing possible opportunities, entrepreneurs should avoid the pitfall of getting too rigid in their plans. I challenge all entrepreneurs to really understand the fundamental sources of the opportunity they are pursuing. What are the macro forces and the industry trends that have created the potential opportunity?

Macro forces can go all the way up to economic, social, cultural, political, technological issues that are shaping the industry. This may require some additional research, but will pay off over time. Often the reason there is a new opportunity in the first place is a result of these forces being in constant flux and change. As Peter Vaill calls it, a state of perpetual white water. So, the very changes that created your opportunity can move past you and make your business obsolete if you do not continue to adapt, evolve and innovate.

Entrepreneurship should be an on-going process, not a one-time event.

I am proud to say that none of the students who studied with me in the late 1990s fell into the get-rich-quick scheme that was known as the dot.com craze. My students knew that my view of true entrepreneurship was that it was not just a mechanism to feed off of greed and raise a bunch of money that had no real purpose just because you could.

True entrepreneurship is about addressing real needs, building value, creating jobs, fueling the economy, building strong communities, and creating real wealth for those who take on the risk of investment. I told my students that they could start a dot.com if they like, but if they wanted my support (and a reasonable grade) they had to start one that met those criteria. None ever did. At the time I took some heat from many of my fellow academicians, but I stuck to my guns on this one and I think that time proved me right.

Om Malik, who has had his work in a variety of business publications including Forbes, writes a piece in Business 2.0 titled "The New Road to Riches:
How to get ahead in the postbubble world: Build a company cheap. Flip It fast. Repeat."

When I first read this title, the words of Pres. Reagan came to mind, "Here we go again!" But read on. The techies finally are beginning to understand true entrepreneurship in Version 2.0 of information technology start-ups.

"(It) is part of an emerging breed of here-today, bought-tomorrow startups that are sprouting with minimal funding, flowering briefly, and being gobbled up by far bigger companies. In many instances, these built-to-flip outfits forgo -- or sometimes can't get -- money from venture capitalists. They instead create shoestring operations focused on the rapid development of narrow technologies to plug gaps in existing product lines or add useful features to existing products. Then they look to a deep-pocketed patron to scoop them up."

Instead of raising money just because they can, these folks are now looking for real opportunities, bootstrapping them, and finding a way to help them grow. While I am a little concerned about the "flipping" part, at least they are getting the first steps right this time.

How big is this trend? "By the end of September, there will have been more than 5,300 tech acquisitions in 2004, based on research from Mergerstat."

My hope is that those who get bought up and then are locked into employment deals with big tech companies will begin to become restless with the corporate life. Maybe Version 3.0 of the tech boom will actually see entrepreneurs who actually want to build companies that have legs and will build value over the long term. Then we may really see a Renaissance of technology companies fueling sustainable economic growth. True techie entrepreneurs: what a concept!

Travis McMenimon is a fellow blogger who happens to be a college senior at Villanova (what a wonderful and open media this is). He has been blogging about his personal "Odyssey of the Mind" at his blog site of the same name. He polled a few of his fellow bloggers who were much longer in the tooth and grayer in the beard than he is to see what we thought about the issue of when is the right time to start your first venture. As you can imagine, we all have different thoughts on this question....You can read about what each of us said Travis' blog.