The macro situation makes it harder to start a startup, for a surprising reason. Startups can get higher returns than the average company because it's cheap for

The macro situation makes it harder to start a startup, for a surprising reason. Startups can get higher returns than the average company because it's cheap for them to bet the company on a new paradigm: going from a 10% chance of X to an 8% chance of 2X is a good deal for them; for a big company, the status quo is a bigger sacrifice -- even if the RIAA found some great way to make artists and users happy with free downloads and shared files, I bet this billion-dollar idea would kill their multi-billion dollar existing business, so they'd avoid it. In a recession, the chance of a company becoming worthless goes up, so the risk involved in betting the company on a new paradigm goes down. So the problem with a recession isn't that you have fewer customers -- it's that your established competitors will act more like startups.