The Rise of the Homepreneur and the New Report from Network Solutions

Over the last decade many entrepreneurs have turned their homes into remote offices in the early days and over time these home-based entrepreneurs or “homepreneurs” have become a force to be reckoned with. Because what many deemed a place for hobbyists or telecommuters, the home has become the affordable and sensible place to do business. With technology today, many work virtually and teams are formed from a global pool of resources, so it quickly becomes irrelevant if you have pricey office space on K Street in DC or at 30 Rock in NY but work out of your home in suburbia. Much to an entrepreneurs desire to be competitive that smart strategy can be passed on to clients in the form of lower costs and flexible teams.

This past Friday, BusinessWeek published this article on “The Rise of the Homepreneur” which discusses the findings of the report “Homepreneurs: A Vital Economic Force” which is a new report published by Emergent Research, a small research and consulting shop in Lafayette, Calif. “We’re seeing more and more home-based businesses that are real businesses,” says Steve King, who coauthored the new report with Carolyn Ockels. To prepare the report, they analyzed U.S. Census data and Small Business Administration research, along with data from our very own Small Business Success Index, a survey of 1,500 companies sponsored by Network Solutions and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Highlights of the Report and Download Link

The report is a good read and here are some highlights from the paper:

• Home businesses employ over 13 million people.
• Nearly 6.6 million home businesses generate at least 50% of the owner’s household income
• 35% of home businesses generate $125,000+ in revenue; 8% more than $500,000.

Reading the summary section of the report I was not surprised by the three trends why more people are becoming homepreneurs:

1. The lower costs and risks associated with starting a home-based business
2. Demographic and social shifts
3. A lack of corporate jobs

To find out more and read the whole report click this link to find out more from latest SBSI Research brief.

Tags: businessweek, emergent research, Homepreneur, SBSI

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs, Small Business, Small Business Success Index, Workforce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.