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Yeah, it's long, but it's worth reading the second page. I take time & care in writing my posts. If you're going to mod it, at least read the whole thing and breath in & out a couple of times before you hit the wrong number. We're prodded to Use the Preview Button! Check those URLs! before posting. Do the posters who carefully craft their posts like magazine articles. n.b. appropriate parties: it would be nice if the preview showed us where a page break is going to appear so we know whether to risk either an incomplete post or modded because people won't go to page two.

I'll throw away a karma point to get this in at the top - and dig for the precise information later -- as in a precise link. I've made allusions once or twice in the previous few months.

Ever hear of SBIR/STTR? (Small BInnovation Research Program) / Small Business Technology Transfer Program) ???

There are plenty of links and lots of portals which front end various aspects -- depending upon the purpose of that site, but here's the SBA (Small Business Administration's) take on it -- sort of a SBIR/STTR for Dummies. If you're looking to go out on your own and don't want to live on hot dogs for lunch and weenie broth for supper for if|until you get some traction, you might want to take a look what's going on.

Without digging any deeper than the SBA's first page and reading that article, do you see enough connections (e.g., specific numbers and wording) to be more than a coincidence? (oh, you own the patent but the gov't can use it royalty-free.

The hot thing these days is to create incubators, particularly at universities, where the right resources can be focused.

Re: Gates? $100M tossed around like a volleyball several times to innoculate a goodly portion of 3rd-world children against some of the scurges people deal with every day which we'd scream about if more than four kids in the same school district, not even school or class, came down with the same thing. He's now leaving what he dropped out of Harvard to do and spend [what will likely be] the rest of his life doing what he stated several years ago: giving away 95% of his accumulated worth.

$900 hammers? to toss out a cliche (trite cliche if you want the overkill people usually write), SBIR/STTR is supposed to be a multi-win situation: the military doesn't have black eyes for outrageous spending on these things; products are put together which have as much a civilian solution as military[1]; those interested in raising funding can do so without large risks; civilians are getting products on the market which might have an entry investment high enough only those who sniff at all of their food before they eat it or rely on Web 2.0 -- no grey areas. Do you know how that type of pricing comes about? Once the contract is established, the money is jostled about in spreadsheets until certain things balance. Every business does it. But when you're looking at billionz 'n billionz of dollars for a project, the detail load is so high they aren't going to be able to hide everything...some things ooze out the cracks.

People talk about $5/aspirin tablets at a hospital. The price is established the same way. An expectation is handed down as to how much revenue the pharmacy must bring in during the next year based upon a handful of factors. Sometimes you don't even have the final prices handed down by the vendor (or they may change them during the year if things don't work out). price + (markup * factor). (price * factor) + markup. (pRiceRange + markup) * factor. (priceRange + PriceRange[Market]) * factor. Sit back and imagine the possibilities. Everything is shifted around until things balance and things don't look too outrageous. Trust me. I don't work at a

You may be interested too look for companies with small business inovation research grants (SBIR) - many of them do earlier stage work as many bridge the academic to business orientation. Most of the technical folks that I have worked with are PhDs - perhaps becuase they require that people write grants to be funded and PhDs are more likely to do this. Each federal research funding agency has an affiliated SBIR program. Portions of the grant projects are made public as are geographic and regional information. If you provide more information maybe I can narrow more. Good luck. See http://www.sba.gov/SBIR/indexsbir-sttr.html

The problem is that their husband pushes them to work because he is a lousy money manager and can't afford to have her stay at home.

As consumers, women buy or influence at least 80 percent of all household spending. -- WOMEN ARE MORE THAN A MARKET, THEY'RE A SOURCE OF PROFIT

Sure, smaller businesses are less powerful, but they're also problematic from an economic standpoint; most small business either don't hire very many employees [...]

Eh? They don't individually, but altogether they do quite a lot. In particular, they employ half of all private-sector workers and create 60-80% of all new jobs.

Moreover, they are an essential training ground for learning how business works. Any sailing instructor will tell you that a small boat is the best way to learn. Why? Because it's more responsive, because you do most of the work yourself, and because you are closest to the million little details that tell you what's going on. The same applies to small businesses.

And of course, they're where most large businesses come from. The Internet titans, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Google, were all started by one or two people; none were spun out of larger firms. I think that's because large companies are generally terrible at innovation.

It seems to me that people have just automatically assumed that larger businesses are bad [...] and that smaller business are somehow intrinsically "good"[...]

I have consulted in education, government, and perhaps 40 different businesses large and small. I think small businesses are, essentially, more American. Economic independence drives political independence. Every large corporation I have worked in is, in behavior, a feudal monarchy. I don't think you can spend ten hours a day bowing and scraping before one's nominal superiors and then go home and be the kind of independent citizen our founding fathers were hoping for.

For procurement contract awards, the US government considers any business with less than 500 employees to be a "small business."

When mesasuring by number of employees, the SBA (Small Business Administration, a department of the US government concerned with the creation and growth of small businesses) defines "small" to be anywhere from 500-1500 employees for all types of industry except wholesaler where it sets the limit at 100 employees.

http://www.sba.gov/size/sizetable2002.html

it's what "everybody" is a part of. http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbastats.html

Dude, you are flat smoking crack if you think small business is some cozy "write everything off" type of arrangement. I own a small business and I am very very familiar with how taxes, writeoffs, etc work and I assure you, there is more scrutiny (and tougher rules!) for small business than ANY Fortune 500 company.

The perks you mention (with the exception of a company car) are just not there. If someone is taking cash and not reporting the transaction/revenue -- then they are breaking the law and we (society) will deal with them. Same for employing illegals. But by and large, the VAST majority of small biz owners do not operate this way. They pay taxes, insurance, Social security, and everything else that has to deal with regulations in the US (EPA, FCC, OSHA, SEC, Insurance board, public utility commissions, Congress, IRS, FBI, and double that for state agencies!).

Stop generalizing. What you are talking about is a small percentage of the small business world. And small business IS the heart of the American economy. NOT, the Fortune 500's of the world.

The Office of Advocacy defines a small business for research purposes as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees.

Small firms
- Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
- Employ half of all private sector employees.
- Pay 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
- Have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade.
- Create more than 50 percent of nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
- Supplied more than 23 percent of the total value of federal prime contracts in FY 2004.
- Produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms. These patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
- Are employers of 41 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer workers).
- Are 53 percent home-based and 3 percent franchises.
- Made up 97 percent of all identified exporters and produced 26 percent of the known export value in FY 2002.

In 2004, there were approximately 24.7 million businesses in the United States, according to Office of Advocacy estimates. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates there were 29.3 million nonfarm business tax returns in 2004; however, this number may overestimate the number of firms, as one business can operate more than one taxable entity. Census data show there were 5.7 million firms with employees and 17.6 million without employees in 2002 (and 18.6 million without employees in 2003).

I'm not really familiar with Austrailia, but in the United States most public Universities have Small Business Centers that provide free help.

For example, near where I live in Florida, the University of West Florida offers services.

Or the United States Small Business Association provides resources.

My wife made use of these when she started up her business. Its been about 18 months, not making a profit yet but sales have been increasing.

Here's a start. You don't need slashdot's help!

Small Business Association

and someone mentioned NOLO which has a lot of articles (besides the publication mentioned) on legal stuff...

Good to get a sense of this stuff before seeing the accountant...

e.

Of course, maybe my definition of small business is different than the posters.

according to the SBA, the threshold for 'nonstore retailers, electronic shopping' is $23M.

ps - i did read the article.

The article does state that it would only require it for businesses that have over $5 million in gross taxable sales, which would eliminate the truely small businesses. The big problem would be the small businesses that have just over the $5 million minimum and that has a very narrow net profit. You would probably find a large portion of them that operate in good faith, but failed to collect the proper taxes for one reason or another and could be fined. With a narrow net profit and fines, could easily mean a downward spiral for that small business.

Any policy enacted in the United States should help promote small business, not make it more difficult to operate. Especially, since they accounted for 99.7 of the businesses in the U.S. in 2003 and they account for over Half of the employment in the US. Small Business Administration

Technically a company is not necessarily a for-profit venture and therefore it should be specified whether a company is non-profit or for-profit. You will come across this very early if you read up on starting a business from places like http://www.sba.gov/

That said I agree that for-profit does not mean at all costs and ethics be damned. Obviously there are many companies that throw ethics out the window and believe in the principle "the ends justify the means". In fact it seems that entire countries and cultures are deviantly bent towards that principle. I think this propensisty towards lack of ethics in business is creating the expectation that any for-profit venture lacks ethics.

So don't get too upset about people specifying profit vs non-profit but keep up the sentiment on ethics as a requirement for good business, your not alone.

burnin

If/when the minimum wage matches or exceeds the cost of living, people wind up buying more (not many people wind up actually saving their money, whether they can or not). This increases the demand side, which then helps supply side businesses. Without a minimum wage increase since 1997 and with the decrease of public and private unions, buying power has gone down on the whole.

The problem is that the money has to come from somewhere. Companies can decrease profits and still hire the same amount of workers, but the real problem is that when you put more money in the hands of more people, inflation is just around the corner. When you increase minimum wage, people might initially have more buying power, but soon prices will raise to the highest level the markets will bear, then you'll have to increase minimum wage again, then prices will go up, ad infinitum.

Contrary to (popular?) belief, a rise in the minimum wage will not adversely affect the vast majority businesses ability to hire new workers.

Define the "vast majority" of businesses. According to http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.html, 50% of all employees work for small businesses, and small businesses represent greater than 99% of employers. Many small businesses survive on slim margins to begin with. Raising minimum wage for these businesses will directly affect their ability to retain current employees and hire new ones, at least until they can raise prices accordingly, which just gets you back in the same hole.

Another problem with a national minimum wage is that the cost of living varies widely around the country. $5.15/hr might be plenty for many rural communities, but you couldn't make enough to survive at that rate in someplace like NYC even if you worked 16 hour days. Many states have their own minimum wages which are higher than the federal minimum; in some cases much higher.

There will always be a dichotomy between rich and poor until all things are without value, which will never happen. There will always be a subset of the population who, through luck, skill, or less respectable means, manages to aquire more assets than he or she needs at the expense of the general populous. Communism claimed to stave off this imbalance by giving everyone equal pay, benefits, housing, etc., but that hasn't worked out too well for most countries. Meanwhile, Capitalism accepts that there will be a dichotomy, but (theoretically) tries to manage the playing field so that the people with the best ideas will be the most successful. We throw in a little socialism to support basic needs such as shelter, food stamps, welfare, etc., but there's no way to wipe out poverty; only to redefine it. 500 years ago, poverty may have been the same as homelessness, whereas today it means sleeping in a crappy apartment, eating government cheese, and using rabbit ear antennae.

The best way to redefine poverty to an acceptable quality of life is through socialist programs, not by placing artificial restraints on a free market economy. Many Scandenavian countries have a high standard of living because they realize that, for example, the benefit of having guaranteed healthcare, and thus a healthy and productive workforce, outweighs the cost. Sweden doesn't even have a minimum wage, and has only 2-3% unemployment.

My point is that minimum wage is only a band-aid on an infection. It might cover up the problem, but underneath the infection will fester, and in the long run the problem will only become worse.

Small businesses represent more of the US GNP than ever before.

This is an interesting statement. I never heard anyone make it before.

Do you mean it in the trivial sense of more $$$ than ever before?

Or do you mean it in the more meaningful sense of larger % of GDP?

I assume the latter. The front page of a Google search on "small business GDP" yielded one piece of real research. Chart 1 (p. 7) of that report tells a different story. Small business' share GDP (relative to large business') drops steadily from 1958 (the first year shown) to 1980, is relatively steady until 1992, and then experiences a slight increase until 2000 (the last year shown). Over the entire span, there is a substantial decrease on the small business' share of GDP.

That's just one study of course, done by an economist at what appears to be a pro small business organization. One that I merely skimmed.

Could you point me to some better data?

WTF are you talking about?

According to the Small Business Administration, most "private sector employees" are employed by small businesses.

There are over 20 million businesses in the United States -- so the Fortune 500, while significant, isn't *all* of the corporations in the United states. Not by a long shot!

So if you think "the Fortune 500 = all corporations in the United States", you're quite mistaken.

Do the Fortune 500 corporations make about 1/13th of the monetary spreadsheet errors in the United States? I don't know, but it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me.

(If anything, I suspect small businesses use a lot *more* spreadsheets than the F-500. Where IBM will have no problem setting up an RDBMS with a web front-end, a small business will just make a spreadsheet and pass it around.)

Unfortunately, companies of this size comprise the bulk of American business

I think that is incorrect. No matter how you measure it, small businesses are a larger component of the economy.

• Represent more than 99.7 percent of all employers.
• Employ more than half of all private sector employees
• Pay 44.5 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Generate 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually.
• Create more than 50 percent of nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
• Produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms. These patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
• Are employers of 39 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer workers ) .
• Are 53 percent home-based and 3 percent franchises.
• Made up 97 percent of all identified exporters and produced 29 percent of the known export value in FY 2001.

4 year old stats, but I don't think it's changed

link

So many of you seem to be saying "Grants don't allow companies sell the technology" or "A business should not profit from public money".

But let me share something with you..

There is a program called SBIR (Small Business Inovation Research). In which small businesses ( under 500 employees) can submit for grants for very (typically) very specific "problems" the various federal agencies want to have solved. With an end result being commercialization of your product/technology.

It goes like this..
1. Feds put out a list of solicitations
2. You submit a paper describing your idea and how commercially viable it is
3. You may or may not get "Phase I" funding for research.

4. Now, if you did well in Phase I you can submit for "Phase II" funding. Which gives you more money. This step is primarily to help get your product into the market. So you better have a good set of sales numbers ready.

Sometimes the "product" is something that the Feds will want to buy from you (e.g. NASA, US Army, etc..) and other times it will have civilian application. So if you want it to have civilian application, you can work on that too with the grant money.

And in regards to IP, you retain exclusive rights to ALL work you have done. And the US Govt. also has right to the technology, but not to sell it, just to use/improve/rework it.

This is not free money, you do need other sources of capital in order to progress in the funding. They aren't giving out free money without you doing some work and showing you can generate outside interest.

The point of the program is to grow the US economy and also to provide the US Govt. with R&D for technology it finds it has a need for.

There are many details that I have just glossed over. But you can find out more here.

There is a national conference twice a year to learn more about the program. You can find out about that by going here.

It has a sister-program called STTR which allows you to work with a university and use their labs and staff. You can learn about both at the conference, I find them quite informative.

Don't go getting your panties all in a bunch. Look, the bottom line is that while outsourcing hurts, it's not the end of the world. Not everybody works for large corporations you know. According to the SBA (Small Business Administration), small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all employers and small businesses employ 50.1 percent of the private work force.

So even if all of the large corporations outsourced every junior programming position, junior programming jobs would still exist, they would just be harder to find.

A directory of all department employees, home phone, address, emergency contact, and home email is an example. This information is not classified. However, I do not know anyone that would want their employer making suck a directory public.

If you're talking a private company, then of course the information isn't classified, but it also is not public. It wasn't paid for by your tax dollars, and FOIA doesn't apply to it.

If you're talking about the government, while such personal information is not classified, it DOES meet one of the other areas specified in the FOIA as exempt from FOIA (personal privacy, in this case, and possibly internal personnel rules and practices). FYI, those exemptions (taken from here) are:

Exemption 1: Classified Documents
Exemption 2: Internal Personnel Rules and Practices
Exemption 3: Information Exempt Under Other Laws
Exemption 4: Confidential Business Information
Exemption 5: Internal Government Communications
Exemption 6: Personal Privacy
Exemption 7: Law Enforcement
Exemption 8: Financial Institutions
Exemption 9: Geological Information

What's my point? My point is that the argument that some unclassified information should be restricted by the government is fine and dandy, but we've already specified what areas those are. I don't think we need to expand them anymore. I certainly don't want to suddenly start restricting things like satellite images and derivatives yet not classifying them because state employees might possibly need them. I'm all for moderation in restriction. :)

The value I was talking about was in the increasing technology not necessarily in the quality control procedures. I'm not going to argue that quality control in America is still pretty bad compared to the purely mathematical and analytical methods of some of the Asian manufacturing countries. By the way complexity does not equal quality. While your easy to fix engine might be a novel idea most of your old stock small block 8's produce less horsepower and torque than newer 6's and they certainly use more gas. There isn't any arguing that technology is better now than it was then. You have to think about this technology improvement when you look at the overall price/income layout now and then. You're not buying the same product then as you are now so you have to be careful when you make a direct comparison.

Meanwhile I have been thinking a bit more about the impact of credit on the consumer and commercial markets. Economics would say something like this. If the bank has $100 to loan out then they'll loan out $90 of it to someone, who will then spend or loan out a portion of that money. This process will continue until some limit is met. This process is called multiple expansion and the overall effect is to inflate the money supply and the banks end up owning everything. Instead of the money being in the banks and/or savings it is being circulated to many different people which causes a lot of increased spending. This causes certain longer-term markets to bear higher priced goods because people will take out a few thousand extra on their already large loan to pay a slightly larger amount. Unfortunately this happens over and over again for decades and you get the overpriced car and housing markets that require 60 month and 30 year loans respectively. That is, even the people that wouldn't have used credit are forced to buy in this market, therefore expanding the use of credit even more. Paying it back is the bad part, and a lot of people get into trouble here. That's all I will say about that.

I thought a bit more about your social security comment. Social security is based purely on population. The account isn't shrinking, it's just not going to be funded for the baby boomers because there are a lot more of them. It's a simple distribution of birth rate.

Go read the statistics on small businesses and you'll see that wealth is NOT distributed to the wealth 1%.

http://app1.sba.gov/faqs/faqIndexAll.cfm?areaid=24

It's the small businesses, the average guy that makes up most of the united states. Small businesses don't outsource and they represent 99.7% of overall employment, a point that many people seem to miss. They seem to feel this overall big divide between everyone else and themselves mostly because of their frustrations about their own positions. There does not exist this great divide that everyone seems to want to talk about. Some people are rich, some people are poor. some people are in the middle. Almost 50% of private sector wages are paid to these 99.7% of the employees so you know they aren't rich. that means at LEAST 50% are middle of the road workers trying to feed their families. And I'd be willing to say quite a bit more. although I can only theorize about that.

As far as the free trade question. The total production and output of society has a few different quantities associated with it, I guess we'll look at the GDP. The GDP of India is low, a lot of the population is not educated and they are overcrowded and don't live in the best conditions. Now assume that someone jumped started a service sector for them, (Like IT). Now all of a sudden they need products, buildings, and personel to support their cause. They hire more people close to them. They also need services performed for them so that gets even more people on board. Now these people with jobs buy more things, the IT people buy more things and eventually they become more and more wealthy (with someone elses we

Patents, even legitimate ones, are basically just tools for large corporations anyway. Garage inventors can't afford the fees anyway--and what good is the patent if they aren't going to be able to enforce it? Whether he or she lets the corporations get away with it, or loses the patent for lack of enforcement, the patent gets copied anyway. Your argument is self defeating.

I believe you'll find you're wrong on several points. Many patent applicants are "garage" inventors. Small businesses create 13-14 times as many patents per employee as large ones, and those patents are twice as likely to be cited in other patents. http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.html

Further, garage inventors can afford the fees. The patent office has special reduced rates for qualifing small businesses. First, you don't need a lawyer -- the patent office does allow an inventor to represent himself. Representing yourself, the cost to patent can be under $2,000 (plus a signifigant outlay of time). Even with a lawyer, an average design patent will run you about $10,000. It's not cheap, but it's hardly the sole domain of large corporations as you suggest http://www.patentlessons.com/what%20patents%20cost .html

As for not being enforced, that's where the current system is very effective. Since the inventor doesn't have to sue everybody who violates his rights to mantain his patent, he can choose to only go after companies with enough money to make a prosecution profitable. The inventor doesn't have to burn money to mantain his patent against a small startup company that will simply declare bankrupcy if they lose the case.

Do it

That's your problem. Small and medium businesses drive the economy. Those who argue for extreme government regulation and economic control focus exclusively on large multi-nationals and build ridiculous emotional stereotypes of employers. Then, they argue for government practices that strangle small and medium sized businesses.

Oh, sorry I didn't use the proper corporate gobblydigook to describe my point, sure businesses are fueled by customers, but they are built on employees. You're not going to get good service from a business without well treated employees, it just doesn't happen.

Exactly. That's why companies that don't treat their employees well go out of business. You're getting it after all: you're just not thinking it all the way through.

So basically screw everyone who works entry level jobs and force them to live inevitably in poverty.

Straw man. I never said anything like that. The *vast* majority of people working minimum-wage jobs are doing so for supplemental income (e.g.: teenagers or spouse). They're not living in poverty.

Another data point: illegal immigrants are the quintessential "low-income" wage-earners. A local landscaper here employs illegal immigrants from Mexico for $12 per hour. No joke. Perhaps he's not the evil slave-driving capitalist hyena you suspect him to be? He's not even required to pay minimum-wage but he pays more than minimum-wage. How did a human being with compassion get in the position of an employer, one wonders?

I'm talking about big businesses. Not small businesses.

See above.

The big ones that employ half our population

In other words: how dare they enable half (slightly less than half, actually) of our population to earn a living?

and whose execs account for the vast majority of the money in this country.

So? CEOs are employees as well. They don't set their own pay rate: the board of directors decides how much they're worth. And that's their business.

Even so, the number of CEOs in America who are rich is miniscule. As I noted earlier, 99.7% of American employers are small businesses, each run by people like you and me.

They can easily afford to pay when minimum wage goes up. Would shaving that 20 cents times x minimum wage employees off the hourly wages of the top level execs really hurt them?

Combined with excessive regulation and unreasonable demands from employees who make much more than minimum wage? You betcha. Additionally, as described above, the minimum wage locks low-end jobs out of the labor market.

Yeah cuz I know all those minimum wage employees need so goddamn much training to know how to make a Taco or use a broom. That must cost employers dearly !!!

It's not about teaching them to do their current job more efficiently. Many minimum wage employers sponsor education for their employees to help them get higher-paying jobs later on.

Also, I didn't know that my local fast food joint (or any other minimum wage employer) was going to help pay my way through college! In your dreams...

Not at all. You may be surprised to know that many minimum-wage employers actually do exactly that. Burger King. Chick-Fil-A. Wendys. Just as examples.

Once again you completely miss the fact that I was talking about large corporations, not small businesses, therefore making this comment completely irrelevent.

Once again, you completely miss the point. Your stereotype is only relevant to 0.3% of American employers. And I imagine that it probably doesn't even reflect reality in most of those cases.

Perhaps if they received decent

The numbers came from this page

Besides, a more relevant figure would be the spread of the dollar value of those jobs. (I don't know those figures.)

The complaint that many jobs are low paying is irrelevent for 4 reasons: 1) A lot of those jobs are supplementary income; 2) People take jobs for pay rates that are satisfying to them; 3) We need to trim down and compete--artificially raising wages aren't going to help; 4) The purpose of a job is to earn income and *not* to pump up the ego--life is tough, stop whining and deal with it. Better yet, work your way out of it. I've seen plenty of people who have very little income work hard to get an education and move up. It works. But only if you're willing to work hard.

Small employers, taken together, are the largest employer in the nation (maybe not bigger than the gov't)

From US Small Business Admin. Office of Advocacy
How important are small businesses to the U.S. economy?

Small firms (under 500 employees):
Represent more than 99.7 percent of all employers.
Employ more than half of all private sector employees
Pay 44.5 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
Generate 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually.
Create more than 50 percent of nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
Supplied 22.8 percent of the total value of federal prime contracts (about $50 billion) in FY 2001.
Produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms. These patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
Are employers of 39 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer workers ) .
Are 53 percent home-based and 3 percent franchises.
Made up 97 percent of all identified exporters and produced 29 percent of the known export value in FY 2001.

When it comes to access to pols corps get more respect than small businesses who get more respect than the average individual. Hence they get better response such as government bailouts, which I'm pretty sure you business wouldn't have qualified for due to insufficient lobbying power. Your business probably could have qualified for a federal grant, but a single mother of 2 working 37 hours a week (a common cut-off so companies don't have to give benefits) for 8 bucks an hour (37*8*52=$15,392) couldn't qualify for handouts. This is not to say that the small businessperson isn't often between a rock and a hard place, but let's face it if we all called our senator at the same time - BillG gets right through, you can get through to high-level flunky and I get to leave a message for a low-level flunky to get back to me sometime.

At first blush, the Port80 methodology of sampling Fortune 1000 companies seems to make sense: Let's look just at the big boys so the little, insignificant sites don't skew the results.

But who really gets excluded? According to the U.S. Small Business Administration FAQ , the U.S. has 22.9 million small businesses. That comprises 99.7% of all employers, 50% of private sector employees and 44.5% of private sector payroll.

Using these SBA numbers, we can determine that there are around 70,000 large businesses in the U.S. So Port80 is sampling maybe 1.5% of large businesses (and the top 1.5% at that).

I would suggest that the Port80 sampling method is seriously flawed. Furthermore, I'd suggest that it's likely the Microsoft products were entrenched at these largest of the large companies before Linus released his first kernel or Apache even started developing their web server. In that light, it's rather impressive that Apache has taken 15% of that market.

Small companies employ over 60% of all employees in the U.S. (possibly more in Europe). Even more importantly, small companies are responsible for most job growth, at least in the U.S., where typically, small businesses account for 50% to 75% of job creation in the U.S. (see U.S. Small Business Administration for details).

Big company CIOs may say what they like, but it's typical during a recession for lots of new companies to take root and spring up and become the great companies of the next boomtime (1980 Microsoft, Intel; 1990 Cisco, for example). Being thrown out of work by job displacement or bankruptcy is traumatic and painful but also causes a reevaluative process that stirs the creative juices. It's a scenario that's been repeated many times in the U.S.

I would take what CIOs say with a grain of salt; we will see another era of economic expansion and job growth in areas that most of us don't currently imagine. As usual it will be the few lucky and/or visionary folks who forge the path; certainly it won't be the stuffy, overpayed technocrats of the old guard.

It seems to me that globalization is making Americans more wealthy to the tune of $500 billion a year.

A Trade Deficit means we continue to import more than we export, that is, spend more than we produce.

This is a cycle most of you are more familiar referring to as DEBT, in this case, foreign debt. The cycle is hard to stop once it gets rolling, and once foreign debtors no longer believe us credit-worthy, they can refuse us credit and cripple our economy.

Read this for a better understanding of the situation. Economists have been warning about this for years, and now that our core software industries are packing up for India, things look even more bleak. Considering how every government official in America has chosen to ignore this problem, including every president since Reagan, I can't see us addressing it in time to really help.

I worked for 8 months from Germany, but my legal address was a Mailboxes Etc. box in Berkeley, CA. This is a better option than a US PO Box because your address will look "real" -- mine was "1536 Solano Ave. #248" -- 1536 Solano Ave. being the location of the Mailboxes Etc. and 248 being the box number.

Unfortunately, thanks to a bunch of paranoid freaks worried about identity theft, that's not allowed any more. According to a rule passed March 25, 1999, you have to use PMB in your address in order to receive mail to a Mailboxes Etc. box.

Sorry, but when you compared the "$30" you pay to the $300 it would cost your girlfriend, I couldn't help but think you didn't have a clue. I think "any moron" would have read that as a direct comparison, and as such it is flawed. What your employer contributes is part of your compensation package, and you obviously know that. I see your point, and I can respond to it without the need to insult you.

Your original reply told me to look at the difference in cost before I started spewing. Now you say you know what the cost is, but if that's the case, why can't you see my point. What difference does it make if your employer pays it, or work for yourself and pay it?

Like I said, just as insurance is part of the cost of having an employee, it's also part of the cost of working for yourself. If you can't afford it, you can't afford to work for yourself - you need to save more. So yes, if you don't have adequate savings, it can be a huge obsticle.

Choosing to start a business without adequate startup capital to fund your insurance is a choice. That's how most small businesses start. Most small businesses also start without even the simplest of business plans. And the vast majority of small businesses will fail - That's a fact. And they will fail because of choices. Sure, most will fail for lack of planning or funding, but really, they'll fail because someone's choice to jump in without proper planning or funding.

As far as the worker's comp, vacation, etc.- having run my own business for over 6 years before incorporating and moving on to more fulfilling pastimes, I am fully aware of what is required of a self-employed person, an employer and a corporation. I my statement was that most people have jobs so someone else can take care of those things - in other words provide all the things that come with employment, which includes the security of worker's compensation and unemployment insurance, and the relaxation of a vacation.

It's all about choices. I even knew of an employee (not mine, thank goodness) that thought he couldn't afford his share of the health insurance premiums (the $30 in your case, working at a small company, more like $80 in his case). Although he "couldn't afford" the coverage, he somehow managed to smoke over a pack of cigarettes a day. Now he wouldn't have even had to quit smoking to afford insurance - just cut down. Choices. That's what makes this country great - choices. Some good, some bad, some illegal. But you make them for yourself, usually.

When I first started my business, I worked 10pm to 2am at a newspaper so I could afford what I felt I needed for my business, and still be available during business hours. (You can't imagine how hard it was to get that job with my "kindergarten experience").

But hey, what's to worry about? If you're uninsured and get sick or hurt, you can always go to the emergency room, and declare bankrupcy if it gets too expensive. Let the healthcare system absorb the cost, it's not like they're going to loose any money. They'll just keep upping everyone's premiums. So no big deal, right?

Seriously, read the article, check out the SBA, go to the library - there's a ton of free info out there to get started right. My first business went like most others - I jumped in and went at it, with no business plan or savings. It even lasted a couple years- but with a plan, some savings, and some free help from the volunteers (mostly retired business owners or corporate officers), it probably would have done as well as my second one.

And your girlfriend - my God, being a self-employed single woman is way better than being a guy - there's all sorts of help out there. She should check out the ABWA. And if she's a minority or a single mom, there's organizations practically begging to give her a small business loan so she can start off right, with a salary and health insurance. You just need a business plan, and the SBA or ABWA will help with that.

If you can barely pay the bills as it is, and you think that's a good position to be in to start a business, you've been watching too many infomercials.

At the height of the Internet, when Energy trading was booming, or when AOL was busting at the seams (naked stripper parties), those things happen, but for the backbone of the US economy, which is the small to medium size business (99% of all employers Small Business by the Numbers), that kind of waste doesn't happen.

At least that way you don't wake up the next
morning not remembering anything and feeling
dirty...

Au contraire, I believe you're confusing these with these.

The definition of Small Entity is long, but, as a starting point, individuals and companies with fewer than 500 employees is considered a small entity.

Not to act all prissy, but actually it isn't that long:
1) Independent inventors (someone who has not assigned and is not under obligation to assign the invention)
2) Nonprofit organizations
3) Small business concerns

See here. What's long is the document that defines what a small business concern is by the industry it is in. You might note that a "Electronic computer manufacturing" business is a small entity if it has less than 1,000 employees, whereas for beer and ale wholesalers it's 100. "Custom computer programming services" are defined in dollar amounts, though, where the limit is $18M in revenue.

They could even hire him as sysadmin

Funny that you mention that. Most actual mis-uses of sensitive information and computer networks come from current or past employees of the company compromised.

Funny thing is, most companies don't have anything to offer in the way of financial 'secrets' or documents of any worth that are on a network.

This isn't nearly as true as it used to be, even for the government.

One of the things Companies will never understand is advice for Free

IMHO, companies like that deserve to go out of business.

There's a reason 50% of all employees work for a small business in the US. Some large companies do an ok job of learning from their mistakes and not punishing those wishing to help them (cough*IBM*cough). But if a company thinks they can stay in business just by leveraging their position at the top (cough*Microsoft*cough), they've got another think coming.

If you can't know your own products well enough to know when something important comes up, and if you aren't willing to learn from your mistakes, I don't think you've got much business in software. (Yes, there is some hope for Microsoft left, but I don't see them properly chasing it just now)

Its pointless for all but smaller sites, businesses can't use it without remote calls.

• there are approximately 25 million small businesses in the U.S.
• new business formation reached another record level in 1998
• there were 898,000 new employer businesses in 1998 -- the highest ever and a 1.5 percent increase over the record of 889,000 new businesses in 1997
• In 1998, seven of the 10 industries which added the most new jobs were in sectors dominated by small businesses (U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Commerce)
• small businesses hire a larger proportion of employees who are younger workers, older workers, women or workers who prefer to work part-time
• small businesses provide 67 percent of workers with their first jobs and initial on the job training in basic skills
• small business bankruptcies are the lowest in 19 years

Also, small businesses...

• provide approximately 75 percent of the net new jobs added to the economy.
• represent 99.7 percent of all employers.
• employ 53 percent of the private work force.
• provide 47 percent of all sales in the country.
• provide 55 percent of innovations.
• account for 35 percent of federal contract dollars.
• account for 38 percent of jobs in high technology sectors.
• account for 51 percent of private sector output.
• represent 96 percent of all U.S. exporters.

So, here are some suggestions for you to begin:

1) If you are set on just being a consulting company, you are already limiting your options for future growth. I say that because most consultants live an existance that is mostly hand-to-mouth, they have to keep on the move looking for new projects. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you should understand that you won't spend all your time programming. in fact, depending on how successfull you are at managing the business aspect of your company, you may spend very little time programming...and a lot of time selling yourself (i.e. networking)

2) It is a much better idea to build your business around a concept or idea which you can eventually hold as intellectual property. In fact, you can do this by working clauses into your contracts with your clients to keep the rights to the technology you develop for them to yourself.

3) Many of the positive suggestions listed here list books by people like Zig Zeigler and others who profess to know about selling and marketing ideas. It is a good idea to investigate them. Always be open to new ideas to expand how you are percieved and how to perceive others.

4) Brainstorm with your friend and others about market trends. While many percieve the economic situation as a downturn, I see this as an incredible opportunity for getting in on the ground floor of the next big wave in technology. These waves are necessary as innovation in one big area that is popular (the internet, optical networking, etc...) becomes stagnent and crashes the whole tech sector. It may be the case that your perceptions of what the next big thing is are better than the majority of people already in the fray simply because you have a point of view that is untainted by the skepticism running rampent these days.

5) When developing new ideas, you should think about them in a pragmatic way. Many people fall in love with certain kinds of technologies just because they think they are neat. In the real world, "neat" is not enough to cut it. Ideas that meet a percieved need are much more likely to be successfully accepted.

6) When you talk with customers, they will tell you what they want. Unfortunetly, they won't tell you what they need...When you sell, that is what you will have to target. Sell customers what they need, not what they want. You will always have a better impression with them if you do this.

7) If you decide to go for building a product, you may also consider gaining outside investment through VCs and Angels. There are excellent books about this subject in many college bookstores. The long and short of this whole topic would be to keep your ideas easily expressible. One sentence should describe your whole concept. You may also want to read some pointers by Robert Kosberg, a famous hollywood "idea pitching" agent. His site is www.moviepitch.com and it is a good source for seeing how ideas are sold. Disregard that he focusses on movie scripts, his ideas for pitching are quite sound. 8) While many will tell you to stay in your area of expertise, I would say that you should try and move outside of it. Taking a little less money to move into new industries is worth it in the long run. You can break into these by selling your talents in specific technologies that are applicable to an industry. You will have to do some major research to find these out, but it is all gruntwork, nothing impossible.

9) if you are not already very will organized, you should learn to become so! Handling the accounting, legal and insurance aspects of your company are all extremely relevent. You should either seek experts in these areas (others looking for work?) to help you out.

10) Never undervalue the value of positive, experts in areas you wish to explore. Getting these people on board or getting advice from them is invaluable. Don't ignore it. Generally, many of them will give you advice for free (like many of those who have responded to your posting here)

11) Finally, if you have not already done so, visit the sba's website ( www.sba.gov) for additional advice.

I had no idea the SBA was involved in such underhanded practices. And sponsored by our own government, no less.

Incorporating has it's benefits, but also it's drawbacks (paperwork!! scheduled taxes throughtout the year, etc).

You should seriously look into an LLC. Depending on the state that you are in, it may give you exact/similar liability protection similar to what incorporating would give you.

And LLC income/expenses are easy to do - just add your income from your LLC to your taxes, and deduct the expenses. Turbotax handles it all real nice, but it's not hard to do if you keep your receipts and documentation.

You could try contacting your state bar association and see if they have any pamphlets/information about corporations/llc's. Also, contact your secretary of state. Some have Small Business Development Centers that will give you a starting pack to find out what you'd need to do to from a corp or LLC, and what VENDORS LICENSES you will need to obtain. Some will even give you free counseling on your options and such.

Also, there's http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/ and irs.gov

Good luck. I just went through this a few months ago forming my own company.

• Are you trolling?

No.

• Buyers of labor power often don't need to band together because a single buyer is effectively a cartel all by itself. Have you ever heard of a one-company town?

Ever heard of moving?

A lot of people move to urban areas for those jobs. They should be able to move away.

• Employers can have kids, but most employment comes from corporations, and corporations do not have children (though they do pay rent).

What you say is technically true, but most of the economy is actually small business. Many of these corporations support a small number of business owners whose livlihoods depends upon that enterprise. I'm sorry if this doesn't jibe with your "big bad corporation" vs. "poor mother with children" worldview.

In any case, even the big corporations fund pension plans with their equity and have an affirmative fudiciary responsibility to keep their costs, including their labor costs, at a minimum. Those pension plans support retirees that might otherwise be impoverished.

• You're missing the point though. Employers can always afford to let a low-skill worker go, whereas a low-skill worker can't always afford to go or be let go.

You're missing the point that a high-skilled employee might leave some small company and ruin it, whereas the poor small businessman can't always afford to pay what another concern can.

• You're right, a worker who doesn't ensure that he won't be in a bad situation has a "bad business plan". So what? Do you want to live in a nation of 300 million MBAs?

No. Just people who make prudent decisions regarding their futures. People who are motivated to train for more skilled positions, people who save and keep an eye toward their options. The paternalistic society we've come to depend upon actually discourages this.

Look. I don't think all employee/employer relationships are symmetrical. I do think that some businesses gain too much power in society through various means (collusion, government support, many others). I also think that big labor sometimes exercises these same mechanisms. I do believe that our attempts to make things "fair" oftentimes have unforeseen negative consequences. I don't favor always taking the side of the "powerless" worker.

I would really love to hear from Philip Greenspun and his experience with ArsDigita.

I think Venture Capitalists, with this behavior, will f*ck themselves out of a job. Check out the SBA They give very favorable terms. --BlueRain

...you can always quit. www.sba.gov

http://www.equalfooting.com/

http://www.sba.gov/financing/

Something to ponder: if there is a problem with making money from the site now, are you confident that loans or gov grants to expand capacity will help? These sources of cash (as well as investors / acquirers) represent a only part of making an online business work.

You might also want to look at the web site of the Small Business Administration. (I'm assuming your in the USA, if not your country may have something similar)

In a 30 second look at their page I found a lot of good stuff. Including how to write a Business plan and counseling on various issues etc. Looks like a great resource.

Oh and good luck with your venture!

If you really think spam is OK, consider these figures:

There are about 5.7 million businesses in the US. Now assume that only 1% of those decide to send out spam, and that they send out only one spam per year. That's still 156 messages in your mailbox daily, on average. Some days you might get more.

Given how cheap it is to send out spam, it's very likely that more than 1% of businesses would partake, and also unlikely they would limit themselves to 1 message a year.

Spam is only merely an inconvience as long as the companies that partake are kept underground. If spam is legimized, you can be sure it will be a severe problem.