Where It All Began America's entrepreneurial roots go way back.

This month, Jamestown, Virginia, marks its 400th anniversary. The Virginia colony was not only the first permanent English settlement in the New World, it was also the beginning of American entrepreneurship.

James Horn, author of A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America, says that the colonists who settled in Virginia in 1607 were not out to practice their own religion on their own terms. They were an entrepreneurial venture motivated by money--or at least their backers were.

The Virginia Company, a collection of powerful English merchants, funded the enterprise. America represented an untapped opportunity, and first-mover advantage was at stake.