Is it really a great time to start a business?

Aphorisms abound.  The general idea is that while everybody is busy running around in a state of panic about the fucked economy, what you should actually be doing is launching a startup.  But whether or not you believe this is true, you can’t help but notice that a lot of companies are adapting their marketing strategies to this idea as if it were.  And it’s quite possible (I’m about to suggest) that in so doing, they are helping to create an environment that is actually favorable to brand new businesses.  I guess I first noticed this last month, when I attended Small Business Week.  At the kind behest of the organizers, I had agreed to give a workshop on online customer acquisition for beginners. The target demographic was small business owners.  Wells Fargo and the SBA were the two dominant brand presences.  From that one may presume (especially if one is a marketer) that both the SBA and Wells Fargo had PR and customer acquisition ambitions at the event.  As it turned out, the SBA was there to bolster attendance numbers for its bright and shiny small business seminars.  And Wells was there to pick up a few business checking accounts and fulfill its SBA-secured loan quota, God willing.  I was impressed by the long perspective these sponsors exhibited.  They were happy to spend money on and give effort to an event that would offer them a chance to meet people who at least were ready to pretend they were thinking about starting up a business.  I don’t think too many actual small business owners showed up.  One would imagine that someone already busy running a small business in a down economy would find it difficult to get away for an afternoon of instruction and networking.  The people who did show up were generally enthusiastic and unemployed.  But because they showed up in good numbers, there were probably a defensible number of good leads for the sponsors in the crop.  And for the lucky few who showed up with an idea and got an SBA-sanctioned loan from Wells Fargo, bully for you!  The lesson here is that there are all kinds of amazing deals and opportunities out there for entrepreneurs, not so much because the down economy creates them, as because marketers are eager to position their wares to would be entrepreneurs, vis-a-vis the economy.  Make sense?