In 1988, I invested most of the earnings from this lecture circuit acquiring the leasehold on Connecticut’s Stratford Inn. Hotels, inns and restaurants have always held a special fascination for me. The Stratford Inn promised the realization of a longtime dream to own a combination hotel, restaurant and public conference facility — complete with an experienced manager and staff.

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn’s 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.

In short, “one-size-fits-all” rules for business ignore the reality of the marketplace. And setting thresholds for regulatory guidelines at artificial levels — e.g., 50 employees or more, $500,000 in sales — takes no account of other realities, such as profit margins, labor intensive vs. capital intensive businesses, and local market economics.

The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don’t have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often.

New businesses are the key to job creation and economic growth, and the Internet is one of the most fertile platforms for new businesses ever established.

We believe deeply in the value of decentralized, emergent, bottom-up innovation, and we want to shape public policies that will allow it to flourish.

1. Suggest your own topics that should be part of an innovation agenda by responding to the main post.
2. Vote on existing topics to show which ones are more important... and which ones are less important.
3. Comment on the existing topics to provide feedback or suggest ways to improve them.

An ACT for the Encouragement of Learning

Unfortunately, the launch of my Technology Entrepreneurship online course has been placed on hold, due to delays surrounding copyright and intellectual property clearance issues. We are working on this and I anticipate providing you with an update within the next few months.

Today's sysadmin todo list:

0. Get corporate membership with EFF.

1. Identify all applications with user-generated content.

2. Move all associated domains to a non-US based registrar.

3. Migrate DNS, web serving and other critical services to non-US based servers.

4. Migrate yourself to a non-US controlled country.

I'm sorry for US sites and users. Your government is hell-bent on turning the internet into a read-only device like TV, easily regulated and controlled. The population will be required to sit quietly and keep their eyes glued on the screen so they don't miss the ads, with any infringers deemed terrorists and pedophiles and thus deserving of summary punishment by DHS squads.

Hopefully the internet will route around the damaged segment, and the rest of us can continue to enjoy the amazing interactivity it has brought our society.

Entrepreneurs are the engine for economic growth and jobs creation. Virtually all of the growth in U.S. jobs has been driven by companies that are less than 5 years old.

Now, it’s time to put some real numbers behind the conventional wisdom! If your company is less than 5 years old and is employing one or more people, stand up and be counted

Musicians deserve more money than they get. Most train harder and for longer than brain surgeons in order to do what they do, and then they earn less than checkout operators for what they do. I strongly believe that more money should go to more musicians more often than it does....

Making music is not (usually) a job of work. It is a creative act. You don't have the RIGHT to make money from your music. You only have the opportunity.

If you make music speculatively - that is, you create it in the hopes of making money from it, then you are a music entrepreneur. As such, entrepreneurship rules apply.

You may invest a good deal of energy, effort and expense in your creative ideas. You may make a lot of money. You will probably make none. But nobody OWES you money just because you put the work in.

If your business model is to grow and sell oranges, then it's no good picking the oranges, then leaving them on the footpath outside your house with a price tag on each one. It doesn't matter how great your oranges are, or how hard you've toiled in your garden. Someone WILL take your oranges. Some will get kicked to the side of the road. Some will get stepped on. But it's not because people are immoral and don't understand or appreciate fruit properly.

If you wish to be reliably rewarded for your music, then get employed to make music as your job.

The odds are stacked against you. History is littered with musicians who are disillusioned, embittered and broke. This was true before the internet just as it's true now. The internet is neither your saviour, nor your enemy.

Let me make that bit clear: prior to the internet, most people spent NO money on music. If they bought a record in a year, it was a gift for a nephew (and it was usually rubbish). Some people spent a lot of money on music, because it was tied up with cultural things like identity that they were really invested in.

Back when you needed a record label to just be heard, it was a lottery. The odds were bad, the lottery tickets were expensive, and most of the prizes - if you did happen to win - were just awful. Now you don't need to play that game - but you need to be smart and you need to understand what the rules of the new game are.

You CAN, of course, get signed to a record label (and that lottery is still in play) but you can also be an entrepreneur. I recommend the latter - but not because it guarantees you money.

But the simple fact is that you don't become a successful entrepreneur by making things that people will not pay for, insisting that they should, and then complaining that their morals are to blame. They may not share your morals, but that's not even the point.

It's not their job to understand your needs. It's your job to understand theirs.

You become a successful entrepreneur by meeting people's needs and wants, solving a problem for them and doing it in a way that allows you to make money.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Even if it was true that all the people you wish to target with your art are immoral thieves who you would never invite into your home - why would you insist on trying to change their behaviour as part of your business strategy?

You may make great and interesting music, and put on an amazing show with amazing costumes.... But decrying a sense of entitlement among those who won't pay you for what you insist on doing is back to front.

The people with the weird sense of entitlement are the ones who stamp their feet and say 'look at all this hard work I put in - where's my money?'

Notice anything missing?

Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he "doesn't do start ups". Which means there isn't a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows that its like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate. That's a huge problem.