– who applied for a patent. They were not only smart but also from privileged backgrounds. After that, things
The Internet has made it possible for a clever teenager with an idea and a computer to create a major company. It doesn't always succeed, by any means, but the damage upon failure is limited to a few tardy payments on your credit card – painful, but not devastating.
became slightly more democratic. Entrepreneurship grew to include running a small shop or agency, often with significant risk and little opportunity to grow. But for a long time, Karl Marx was right: the power belongs to those who control the means of material production. You might have invented some new gizmo at your drawing table, but if you couldn't interest a corporate giant with a factory to fabricate millions of copies of your design, all your creativity had been for nothing. How different things are today. The Internet has made it possible for a clever teenager with an idea and a computer to create a major company. It doesn't always succeed, by any means, but the damage upon failure is limited to a few tardy payments on your credit card – painful, but not devastating. 'The beauty of the Web is that it democratised the tools both of invention and of production,' says Anderson. He believes the path from inventor to entrepreneur 'is so foreshortened it hardly exists at all anymore'. That's no daydream. Three years after the crowdfunding site Kickstarter was created, almost 50? 000 projects have launched, nearly half of them successful, raising total proceeds of $175 million. They range from music and film projects to curious inventions such as a jellyfish aquarium to a device that lets you easily attach a camera to your clothes or backpack. Or take Etsy, the online marketplace where nearly a million creative souls hawk their handmade wares – to the tune of almost $900m in 2012. Nor is this trend limited to the Web. Roughly a thousand workshops exist around the world, such as TechShop, where members can make use of tools like industrial sewing machines and 3D printers. Tens of thousands of makers meet up at MakerFaires, organised in a range of places. The government is also paying attention. US President Obama has pledged to create workshops with modern tools such as – no joke – 3D printers and laser cutters in a thousand American high schools to 'better equip graduates for the demands of a high-tech economy'. But ideas can win big, too. At 'startup factories' such as Y Combinator, talented young people can submit a PowerPoint presentation to apply for a short, intense training program, after which they are given three weeks to create a business plan. The result: a hundred new companies in three years, among them Dropbox and Airbnb, both of which are now worth billions. This is just the beginning. 'Transformative change happens,' Anderson writes, 'when industries democratise,
Is it five o'clock yet?
There's a way out: Just leave. Small business owners number 23 million in America, the vast majority of them non-employer firms (one person working without employees). The number of non-employer firms has risen nearly 25% since 2002. These people are no longer working because that's what a boss expects people to do; they are working for their own growth and enjoyment. Granted, for more than a few, the decision to go into business for themselves was motivated by bitter necessity. They work hard and sometimes earn little. They resent the fact that the government does much less for them than for people who stay put and receive a gold watch at retirement. They sometimes long for the luxury of a paycheck and the company of colleagues. And yet, they also realise that you can be pretty happy with less money. They do things they enjoy and consider important. (That partially explains their long working hours.) Plus: they enjoy the freedom of no longer working for a boss. A recent survey by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment showed that 87% of people would not return to a salaried position, should one by some miracle suddenly present itself. Suppose intrepid fortune hunters had the ability to – in Anderson's words – 'be both small and global. Both artisanal and innovative. Both high-tech and low-cost. Starting small but getting big. And, most of all, creating the sort of products that the world wants but doesn't know it yet, because those products don't fit neatly into the mass economics of the old model.' Well, as it happens, they do. It used to be hard to start your own business. The original entrepreneurs were often inventors – James Watt, Matthew Boulton
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