Another disturbing question: Even if entrepreneurs have a role
in the New Economy, are they willing? Maybe the harshest
entrepreneurial enemy today is fear—the notion that
forfeiting your entrepreneurial dreams and returning to the
apparently safer fold of employment is the wise thing to do.
Are today's laid-off workers still too wary of the stench of
dotcom failure and a cloudy economic future, or will many of them,
like their predecessors in the layoffs of the early 1990s, start
businesses? "I'd be shocked if they didn't," says
Stevenson. "Once most people experience [entrepreneurship] and
discover the allure of doing something they like, they can no
longer be bribed by a high salary."
Fence-walkers can learn a lot from Ben Occhiogrosso. The
48-year-old entrepreneurial veteran co-founded DVI Communications,
a New York City-based IT consulting business, more than 20 years
ago. Before DVI, Occhiogrosso was an entrepreneur trapped in a
telecommunications worker's body. He and two co-workers were
"three workaholics, laboring under the yoke of administrative
bric-a-brac," he recalls. "The reward for hard work was
more hard work. And we sensed we could do this business ourselves
better and faster."
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Since then, he's survived a grueling first year, an almost
crippling dry spell in the early 1980s, the stock market crash of
1987, the recession of the early '90s and the rise and fall of
the dotcom economy. He admits to being envious of the financing
falling into the laps of unworthy dotcoms and calls government
handouts to large corporations "a sore spot." But of
course, all that's minor compared to the trauma Occhiogrosso
experienced on September 11. He never would have anticipated his
entrepreneurial duties would include tracking down his 40 employees
to make sure they were alive, and calling to find out whether his
office, a block away from the World Trade Center, was still
standing. He used to consider his view of the World Trade Center a
perk; now he looks out the window every workday at an empty space.
"So much happened in one day," he says. "I've
never experienced in all my years in business an effect so sudden,
so dramatic, so compressed."
Even with fresh emotional and financial scars, Occhiogrosso
doesn't miss the easy life under a corporate ruler.
"I'm more convinced than ever of the correctness of that
decision I made a long time ago," he says. "I like to be
in control of my destiny. I like to know what the real picture is.
I don't like to be insulated. I'm convinced this is the
right thing for me." General Nathanael Greene's assessment
of the American revolutionaries holds true for Occhiogrosso, as
well as any entrepreneur who has survived the past few years in
business: "We fight, get beat, rise and fight again."
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