It’s time to stop whining. The economy might be melting down like a pat of butter on a hot Hummer roof, but for some people — you, maybe? — this could be a very good thing.
Here’s why. At no other time in recent history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company. Possibly a very profitable company. Let’s call these start-ups LILOs, for “a little in, a lot out.” These are Web-based businesses that cost almost nothing to get off the ground yet can turn into great moneymakers (if you work hard and are patient, but we’ll get to that part of the story).
How do you get started? All that’s required is a great idea for a product that will fill a need in the 21st century. These days you’d do best if your idea either makes people money or saves them money.
And launching now will make your company stronger later — you’ll learn to survive on fumes until the economy improves.
That’s what John Tayman is doing. He’s an author (The Colony, about a former leper colony near Maui) who lives in San Francisco, where I met him; he wrote reviews for a business magazine I edited. Tayman knew little about technology and even less about business. And yet he dreamed of a website that would summarize car reviews from other sources and rank every model of new car. “It’ll be like RottenTomatoes.com meets Kelley Blue Book,” he explained to me during lunch one day last June.