Now is the Time to Start a New Company!

Lately, Big Think guests have been extolling the virtues of recession entrepreneurship, echoing the idea, essentially, that necessity is the mother of invention. Well, today in the New York Times, James Flanigan picks up the conversation, writing about how entrepreneurs, investors and venture capital financiers in Southern California are, counterintuitively, interested in starting new companies. 

The artilce is about a host of recession entrepreneurs, from two senior biotechnology executives who are starting a pharmaceutical company to a software manager who is “raising fresh capital to finance the expansion of a new product” to a venture capital company in Los Angeles that is raising money for an “18-month-old fund to invest in small private companies.”

“Nobody denies that obtaining financing is difficult these days,” explains Flanigan, “but more than 250 people showed up at a Caltech/MIT Enterprise Forum in January to hear experts offer what was described as ‘Critical Insights on Building a Successful Venture in Challenging Times.'”

The optimism of this adventurous new crowd is summed up by an entrepreneur named Jake Winebaum who says, “The Internet will continue to develop at the center of all media and business over the next two years…So the time to start a company is now, when there is less competition because few people are starting businesses.”

You can learn more about recession entrepreneurship by watching our clip of Bob Guccione, Jr., the serial magazine publisher.