Commentary - The Costs of Entrepreneurship Continue to Plummet

100 years ago it took millions to start a company. Capital was scarce, and business was based on huge movements of products. Railroads, autos, foodstuffs, oil, coal ,the great electric power build out, all required stupendous amounts of capital and great masses of physical labor and materials to earn a return. Fast-forward to today. Techcrunch reports that Boulder-based Techstars is incubating 10 businesses for $15,000 each. No “good old boy” networks needed. No begging for cash. You could work a summer job and make enough money to start the next Google. You could sneak into your college computer lab and start the next Flickr. What is the “product”? Information! What is the capital going to buy? Smart people. So, any returns at all on such meager amounts of outlay have the potential to be stupendous. The leverage of the human mind has never been stronger. The downside risks have never been lower. The equation for success has never looked more soluble. Distribution is instant. Payment is in nanoseconds. Receivables? Zero days. Time to profit? Zero time. . Tools to create tools to create tools make development exponentially fast and intuitively easy. The greatest success tool in history may very well be this information economy. What’s the downside? There are no excuses left.

Techtags: Techstars TechCrunch Entrepreneurship Success Startup Capital