Pajama Entrepreneur

Recently, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a jump in the unemployment rate to 10.2 percent. Some economists think we could be looking at 10.5 percent by early next year.

Given these grim forecasts, how do you counsel recent college graduates and others entering the job market for the first time in this employment climate? Is there any advice or strategies you find particularly useful?

I can only speak from my own experience and from the experiences of people I know. I am in the technology industry. I am an intellectual property lawyer who helps large and small tech firms do licensing deals, sell services, get financing and more. In early 2003 when the tech sector was at its worst, my clients stopped coming. Overnight I went from being crazy busy to having empty days.

What did I do? In June 2003, I started a blog called Muniwireless.com, whose purpose was to aggregate news and information about citywide Wi-Fi networks and Wi-Fi hotzones. At that time, cities wanted to set up Wi-Fi hotzones and large citywide networks, but they had trouble finding out who else what doing so. By aggregating all that information in one place, I made it easier for municipal officials, service providers, and equipment vendors to plan and deploy their networks. By early 2004, Muniwireless.com’s posts began appearing at the top of Google searches. By the middle of 2005, I had turned it from a blog into a small publishing company with conferences, a quarterly magazine and seminars (with the help of a US partner). I got advertising and sponsorship from large companies including Intel.

The lessons I learned:

• Start something you are passionate about and capable of doing quickly and well. In this case, I was totally into Wi-Fi. I have been working in technology for years and I knew a lot of people.
• Consider everything to be an experiment. I had no idea when I started Muniwireless.com that it would generate any income for me. That it did was a welcome surprise. Later, when Muniwireless became a massive hype and eventually came crashing down to earth (my partners and I disbanded our venture), I accepted it and decided I would run it on a smaller scale. I have moved on to other projects.
• Network like crazy and ask for help. Although I knew a lot of people in technology, I did not know that many from the wireless industry. So I emailed them. I met some of them in person. I did everything I could to get advertising and sponsorship for the Muniwireless website and our conferences.
• Most of all, have fun. Fun is something people forget in these grim days, but it’s central to the success of anything you attempt.

My advice to recent graduates:

(1) If you are good with web design or programming, set up your own little shop, become a “pajama entrepreneur”. No one needs to know (or cares) if it’s just you running a small web design/programming business. Join a network like Haystack where you can profile your abilities and easily get gigs. Even if, ultimately, your goal is to be hired by a big company, you’ll have a massive advantage over other graduates if you have real clients who pay you for your work and if you can show your future employer a series of projects you have completed. Imagine walking into an interview with a sizeable client portfolio. Note: if you get very good at attracting clients, you will NOT want to work for a big company.

(2) All you need to be a pajama entrepreneur is:

• a fast broadband connection
• Skype
• good web design or programming skills
• cheap place to live (parents’ house, apartment with friends, a city or country which has a lower cost of living)
• optional: if you need an office, join a local co-working group. These are independent contractors or entrepreneurs who share an office to lower their costs.

The key is to lower your costs as much as possible and to do as many projects in as short a period of time as you can.

(3) Do consider living in another country where the cost of living is much lower. There are many American web designers living in Buenos Aires (time zone not too far from NYC where their clients are located). They are charging US web design rates, but living in a far less expensive place where they can actually afford a nice apartment and a reasonable standard of living. They are even able to save money! If moving to another country is too extreme for you, why not leave the big expensive cities like NY and go to a smaller, more affordable locale? All of the web developers I have used for Muniwireless, Mapplr and Shopplr, live in smaller communities. With the exception of two (who moved to San Francisco to work for companies), I have never met them in person. I continue to use two of them and rely on them for maintenance work on my sites. The lesson here is you don’t need to meet people in person. In fact, when I was doing a lot of intellectual property licensing and deal work for tech clients, I met only one or two. I was living in Amsterdam, my clients were all over the place — London, Silicon Valley. I did all of my work via email, sometimes from the beaches of Spain.

(4) Partner with someone whose skills complement your own. If you are very good at writing code but you suck at web design, get someone who is hot in web design and set up a joint venture. That way when you pitch a client, you can pitch one project: design plus programming.

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If you have other thoughts on advice to give recent graduates or recently laid-off employees, please post in the comments section below.