The Rise of the Homepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of the Homepreneurs

fastcompany.com

28 pointsjaybol13 comments

I say the more people employing themselves (+1 or 2 others, perhaps contracting out further work, as well) the better, as we'll then be less dependent on multinational corporations for domestic hiring. We already see what's going on in Japan with Zombie corporations and and the salaryman culture sapping their entrepreneurial spirit.

The more dispersed our workforce is amongst small shops, the better we can weather future economic downturns at least on a psychological level. It'll also go a long way toward Small Business having a much larger say in governance, perhaps even culminating in a Singapore- or Taiwan-style healthcare system with compulsory coverage but price controls and subsidies at the gov't level. It would remove one huge con of owning a small business, anyway.

I would like to declare a moratorium on all new word coinages obtained by combining "entrepreneur" with something else.

That means you, femtrempreneur, homepreneur, kidpreneur, wantrepreneur (though I do like this one) and mompreneur.

what about micropreneur? http://www.micropreneur.com

+1. I had thought homepreneur was some new way of selling houses or people at home employing other people, like maids/cleaners/coooks...

"Wantrepreneur" is justified by virtue of being a true witticism rather than a mechanical combination of a demographic + "preneur" — it's actually funny, or at least meant to be. "Kidpreneur" and "femtrepreneur" are in the same vein as "Bennifer" or "Brangelina."

Original Source: http://www.contactme.com/blog/trends/the-homepreneurs-growin...

Edit to put source at top. Also, looks like they fixed the site. They are apparently running Drupal, which was throwing an error earlier.

7 out of 10 home businesses succeed? I thought that 98% of small businesses fail? How can that be of 53% of small businesses are home businesses?

{edit} Well I guess the saying is that 'most' small businesses fail...

That depends on what it means for a business to fail. My dad had a small consulting business at one point, it gave him some income, but it has been shutdown now. Is that a failure? Would a small business which never made money, but which the owners learned a lot running a failure? Is a business that took full-time work, but which the owners never made more than minimum wage running a failure? What they were unemployed at the time and closed it because they had found a job?

There's a problem with the math (from the graphic):

- Homepreneur based businesses have revenues of 427,000,000,000

- There are 18,300,000 home businesses of which 35% (6,405,000) make more than $125,000

But 6,405,000 * 125,000 = 800,625,000,000

I've always had the feeling that working 'literally' from home is a recipe for heavy procrastination. I think I'd rather spend a little bit of money and get some office space somewhere, so I can somehow force myself a routine, interact with other human beings and so on. But maybe this is just me.

what a garbage blog post. It doesn't even go into detail as to what these home businesses do. Is the point of this post to make me feel better about myself. To give me some hope that I too can start a business just like these people since the stats are going up!

@jeremyjarvis What are you talking about??

Just a "tongue-in-cheek" play on words :)

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