Charles Epstein is starting his business because he got an idea for selling communications services. Maura Cassidy wanted work that was emotionally and professionally fulfilling. And Doug Strachota was having a hard time finding something in his field.
Personal and business reasons are usually the big motivators when entrepreneurs decide to begin new ventures. So, for many people who started companies this year, the slowly improving economy was barely a factor – and sometimes the economy’s weakness was an incentive.
“I’m not sure where the economy is right now,” said Epstein, who is in the process of setting up BackBone Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., communications consulting firm.
Epstein, who already has an 8-year-old marketing firm, said he decided to start the company when he realized that small businesses needed help sorting through the options in wireless and other telecommunications.
Cassidy left full-time work in the spring 2002 and was in search of a more satisfying career when she came up with the idea in April for Go Ask Anyone Inc., which markets decks of cards designed to be conversation starters.
The economy’s weakness, not its nascent recovery, did give her pause, and Cassidy, who lives near Boston, asked herself, “If you start a new company in a bad economy, are you just shooting yourself in the foot?”
For Strachota, fallout from the downturn was the impetus for him to start his own business. He was laid off from his high-tech job in Indianapolis and couldn’t find another. So in June, he and three partners started Get Digital Inc., a service that converts audio CDs to MP3 format.
Entrepreneurship actually gets a boost from downsizings that leave workers like Strachota jobless. They tend to have cash from buyouts that they turn into financing for new companies.
And a weak economy is actually a good time to start a company, said William Dunkelberg, chief economist with the National Federation of Independent Business, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
“Everything you need to start a business is cheap – money is cheap, space is cheap, equipment is cheap, labor is cheap,” he said.
Many entrepreneurs just shrug off the economy because they’ve wanted to start a business for years and it’s now or never.
“You’re going to be 54 this year, you gotta go, you gotta try it,” New York-based Marvin Berger told himself as he decided to start his own company, Rosa’s Original Horchata, a bottled Mexican beverage.
Berger, who has worked in the food distribution business since college, thought the time would be right to sell a bottled specialty beverage, considering the popularity of drinks like Starbuck’s Frappuccino. But, he said, “the reason I did it was out of passion.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
