Recession is Here, Time To Launch A Biz!

I was fortunate enough to be interviewed recently by a personal finance magazine writer (I will let you know which mag it is if I make it into the article) and was asked whether I thought a recession was a good time to start a biz. I thought yes because a) fewer people are willing to take a risk and just want to hold onto their jobs and b) larger firms are also in a conserve position.

It appears that some researchers at Kauffman have some data that shows that more than 1/2 of the Fortune 500 was founded during recessions. From our friends over at the Growthology Blog:

I started with a question posed by our Kauffman colleague Keith Mays: how many companies on the Fortune 500 list were founded during a recession? It turns out that well over half of the companies on the 2009 list started during a recession or bear market.

This, in and of itself, is remarkable. But it also turns out that the Fortune figure, when broken down by decade and when looked at in the context of recent Census papers that Kauffman has helped fund, fits neatly into a narrative of the American economy moving from the bureaucratic capitalism of Galbraith’s New Industrial State to the entrepreneurial capitalism of the past two or three decades (and the entrepreneurial capitalism of a prior era). The composition of the companies on the Fortune list is rather dynamic (surprisingly, I think), but even more importantly, startups have been enormously important in terms of job creation. Without startups, we would have had only a handful of years in which overall net job creation in the economy was positive.

So, whether you are a student, mid-career professional, senior manager, or retiree, if you have ever wanted to launch a biz, now is the time — the trends are on your side. Get out there and do it.