Entries for June 2008

Last month, I speculated that pessimism among small-business owners in surveys about the economy might be driven more by perception than reality. Well, the latest Discover Small Business Watch survey released today (but not yet online) does not get us much closer to figuring out the true cause of the bad feelings, but it does show that the pessimism is only deepening.

The economy is getting worse, according to 79 percent of small-business owners polled in the survey. That's up from 71 percent last month and reverses a previous decline. Even more worrisome is that while the number of businesses experiencing cash-flow problems had also fallen in May, it has increased now, from 39 percent to 42 percent.

Need graphic design for your website or a new logo for your company? Maybe your business has other artistic needs, but you don't want to shell out the money to contract an artist. A new website, crowdSPRING, may be your answer. It applies the Web 2.0 treatment to commercial graphic design.

As the buyer of art, you create a profile on the website about the kind of project you want and how much you're willing to pay. Then artists, who also have profiles on the site, will submit their best cracks at your project (actual work, not proposals), and you can choose the one you like and "award" the designer the money you said you'd pay. Payment is held in escrow by crowdSPRING until the deal is done. Here's how the site describes the process:

Aside from a few odd choices (What Women Want), Businesspundit has a good list of the 50 Best Business Movies Ever. Perhaps it was too recent to be up for consideration, but I would add to this list the summer's best movie so far, Iron Man—a brilliant portrayal of one entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial spirit.

Young Go Getter has a Q&A with Jake Nickell, the founder of one of the more successful online start-ups in recent memory, Threadless.com.

The Wall Street Journal's Independent Street has a guide for how a business owner should shop for health insurance.

How much does politics really matter to entrepreneurs? What policies create conditions for them to succeed—and which cause them to fail or not even try? A recent study by Silvia Ardagna of Harvard University and Annamaria Lusardi of Dartmouth College goes through the data and suggests that a high level of regulations matters a whole lot—in a bad way.

Ardagna and Lusardi looked at a massive survey (the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) from 2001 and 2002 that measured entrepreneurial activity among 150,000 individuals in 37 countries, ranging from the United States to France to India. What makes the study especially interesting is that it distinguishes between people who start their own businesses because they want to (opportunity entrepreneurs) and people who have to work for themselves because they have no other prospects (necessity entrepreneurs).

The Washington Post yesterday reported on how the conventional wisdom that Wal-Mart is the bane of small mom-and-pop businesses is being shattered in the wake of a new Wal-Mart opening in Landover Hills, Md., a close-in Washington suburb in Prince George's County, Md.

The article cites research showing that in urban areas Wal-Mart has not driven out small competing businesses, as it often has in rural and more distant suburban areas. It seems that Wal-Mart can drive up the amount of customer traffic in an area, which can actually benefit neighboring businesses, even if they are in direct competition with Wal-Mart.

Jeff Cornwall, who directs the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, published a column yesterday on how entrepreneurs should go about picking a business partner. That's a subject I've written about here, and also I recently talked with Nigel Nicholson on the issue of family business partnerships and how they can break down if families aren't careful. Cornwall adds some insight into this matter, especially on questions that potential business partners should ask each other:

• Do you share the same vision for the business? Do you share the same aspirations for the business in terms of its size?

• Are you all going to make the same level of commitment of time to the business? What are your work habits and work ethic? How much time off do you plan to take each day, each week, each year?

Recent blog posts that are worth a read:

The 25 Best Apps for entrepreneurs to grow their business.

Business Pundit has more on how entrepreneurs are working to solve energy problems.

Duct Tape Marketing on how to use Amazon.com to publicize your stuff.

Business Opportunities on how the high price of oil is actually a good thing for entrepreneurs.