Freelance Nation 2.0: Startup Nation

The last decade of up and down employment numbers made plenty of us give up on finding a job and turn into permanent contract mercenaries. We don’t trust the machine to stay well oiled, and only dream offers from the likes of Google or Apple would pull us away from a life based on an intricate network of micro-businesses and clients and partners.

We had to learn to do our own taxes - or at least ask our accountant the right questions.

We buy our own health insurance, and are fairly certain we are covered. We hope.

We had to partner with rivals and rival partners.

We screwed up our credit routinely during bad months and set everything straight - or least stable - during good months.

It stands to reason that after we learned how to be Me, Inc. with a nine minute explanation of what we do for a living, the next phase would be running We, Inc.

Like growing crops from prepared soil, smart investors are noticing they just have to add advice and capital to multiply that experience. They don’t have to coach the new group of startups on breaking away from corporate America. That process has occurred naturally. The investment people don’t have to judge a founder based on GPA from Harvard unless they already have a patent or a customer base to back it up.

The new standard is doing things, not knowing things. You can’t wait for the right time or the comfortable situation because even the Post Office lays people off now. As such, even supposedly high risk endeavors like starting a business are now relatively sane compared to days past of weighing offers from Big Blue and GM.

Of course, there is one difference from the GMs of the world. If you are a big enough entity, our antiquated government will bail your operation out no matter how awful and undesirable your products have been for decades. For the rest of us, we run our personal corporations without anyone to lean on but each other.

Posted via email from Fear and Loathing at SXSW Interactive