WSJ: Entrepreneurs Can Lead Us Out Of Crisis

By Mark LaRosa on February 24th, 2009

There is a great article in the Wall Street Journal today on something that I’ve been arguing lately.  That the only way out of the financial crisis is through entrepreneurs.

Missing from this legislation [the stimulus bill] is anything more than token support for the long-proven source of most new jobs and new growth in America: entrepreneurs. These are the people who gave us everything — from Wal-Mart to iPhones, from microprocessors to Twitter — that is still strong in our economy. Without entrepreneurs, we will never get out of our current predicament.

I agree with this article completely.  Its going to take large companies a long time before they will start adding on lots of new jobs, but provided the right breaks, entrepreneurs could start hiring today.  Most are doing more than one job in their company and often need help to accomplish a lot of tasks.  At QuotaCrush, I’d be happy to put at least one person to work, if I wasn’t putting aside so much money to make my quarterly tax payment.  Established businesses, with much more capital in the bank, could deploy even more.

An interesting point in the article is the fact that the last president to have a summit on entrepreneurship was Ronald Regan and the topic discussed was the impact the fax machine was having on business.  Agreed on the authors point that a new summit is LONG overdue.

Perhaps against the author’s tone, is the fact that I don’t think entrepreneurs NEED a stimulus for us to do what we do.  We are going to go and do it anyway.  We are going to create jobs, and we are going to innovate America back to its glory.  That is not a dream – that is a reality that will happen regardless.  You can’t stop the entrepreneurial spirit in America.

Perhaps that’s why the government knows they don’t need to focus on giving those of us crazy enough to start our own companies any incentive – we are going to go and create those jobs anyway.  But, I would love to see goverment step up and help us create them faster for sure.

Jump here for the article.