According to an SBA report, “Expected Costs of Start-up Ventures,” published in November 2003, the average business with one owner costs about $6,000 to start, and the average business with two or more owners costs about $20,000. Where does this money come from? Thirty-one percent (31%) of all start-ups are funded through the entrepreneur’s personal credit cards. Other sources mentioned are loans from friends or family, mortgages on property, savings, cashing out retirement accounts, an inheritance, a full or part-time job…

In August 2005, Jonathan Coulton quit his job as a software developer, with the goal of conducting an experiment: over the next year, could he figure out a way to earn a living as a full-time musician, leveraging the Web and his small-but-passionate fan base?

Outsourcing has received a bad rap in some circles because of its association with job losses that occur when corporations “export” jobs to countries with much lower labor costs than the U.S. But those of us who run small and home businesses have a different perspective on outsourcing. For us, outsourcing is the “secret sauce” that lets us pull together the resources to handle temporary work overloads, reduce fixed costs, speed products to market, simplify distribution, provide more or better service to our customers, and compete with our deeper-pocketed competitors.

When he started his company, Donald Coleman had nothing but his personal savings and a few faithful friends to fund it. Twenty years later, GlobalHue, Coleman’s marketing communications agency that focuses on minority consumers, closed 2008 with $825 million in billings. Numbers like that earn Coleman membership in an all-too-exclusive club: He is a successful black entrepreneur. And he has an idea why there aren’t more people like him. “I think it’s quite evident that the lack of access to capital is the reason why there aren’t more minority entrepreneurs,” he says.

What to call these innovative businesspeople is the subject of some debate. The terms “social entrepreneur” and “social businesses” are generally used to characterize people and businesses that bring entrepreneurship to ventures that have a social mission. Yet there are those who would limit the social entrepreneur label only to those without any profit motive. A separate, but related, category are companies referred to as “socially responsible.” These are generally companies whose core business does not necessarily have a social mission, but who display socially responsible characteristics, like environmental sensitivity…

December 1987 was no time to be raising money for a startup. Computer engineer Len Bosack was trying to attract funding for a young enterprise called Cisco Systems (CSCO). But the stock market had just crashed and the Dow Jones industrial average had plummeted 40% since October. Gun-shy venture capitalists either didn’t get the newfangled technology or deemed it too risky…

Veterans-turned-entrepreneurs offer advice
After 13 years in the Marine Corps, Brian Iglesias was ready to embark on a dream career in filmmaking. Prepared to pay his dues, he worked the phones, sent e-mails, and paid visits. But all he ran into were dead ends. “Not too long ago I was leading over 225 Marines in landslide relief operations in the Philippines,” he says. But “I had to beg people to let me intern. Only my friends were willing to give me work.”
Frustrated, Iglesias decided to start his own company and turned …

Are you missing tax deductions you’re entitled to? Small business owners, self-employed workers, and independent contractors can write off many legitimate business expenses immediately, reducing the amount of income on which they pay taxes. But if you overlook applicable deductions or fail to keep adequate records that will back up your write-offs during an audit, you give up opportunities to cut your tax bill.
The Schedule C tax form used by sole proprietors to report business profit or loss has 21 line items for business expenses—including such catch-all categories as “office …

For many of us, it’s that moment we’ve been longing for. It’s what we’ve worked towards for months or years. It’s the reason we’ve been coming home from a busy day and freelancing in the evenings, or at the weekends.
Quitting the day job. Going full-time. Striking out on our own. You’re not going to miss the office for a moment … right?
Chances are, you’ll find yourself looking back wistfully on certain occasions. Here are a few things you might be missing, and how you could replace them as a freelancer…Going …

The tens of thousands of votes from our readers have been counted, and here’s our impressive group of Europe’s best young entrepreneurs
Winning an entrepreneurship contest is a feather in the cap, but it takes a lot more than that to make a business grow. As the nominees in this year’s BusinessWeek Best Young European Entrepreneurs competition can attest, building a successful startup requires passion, focus, constant work, and sometimes a bit of luck. ..more from BusinessWeek. Photo credit: theresealbrechtson.se