Millennial Entrepreneurship

There was a great piece this weekend in the NY Times about young people who are struggling for jobs simply creating their own by developing new small businesses.

The Small Business Administration agrees this is a great new way to help both develop young people but further to develop our small businesses.

"The future of American enterprise is being shaped by young people of today who are filled with dreams, have a passion for change, hope for the future and a desire to succeed. Pursuing business knowledge at an early age is an important ingredient for future success."

The Times story talks about a young worker who was laid off and frustrated searching for work that wasn't there. Therefore young people instead decide to start their own businesses.

"Plenty of other laid-off workers across the country, burned out by a merciless job market, are building business plans instead of sending out résumés. For these people, recession has become the mother of invention.

Economists say that when the economy takes a dive, it is common for people to turn to their inner entrepreneur to try to make their own work. But they say that it takes months for that mentality to sink in, and that this is about the time in the economic cycle when it really starts to happen - when the formerly employed realize that traditional job searches are not working, and that they are running out of time and money."

Technology and social media is a huge part of that. While the 90's brought a dotcom boom the new millennium has brought a new kind of media consistent with the kind of social world young people love. Multimillion dollar companies like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Mozilla, Threadless, and MyYearbook were all founded and continue to be run by young people.

As our economy continues to flounder and young people search for jobs we have a lot of opportunity to invest in both young people and in developing our small businesses simply by encouraging young entrepreneurs.