Alternative Energy Companies Grow Even as Others Falter

Inquiries, Sales and Funding Rise in Anticipation of New Regulations — and Spending — From Obama Administration

While many small businesses continue to struggle with tight credit and declining sales, one fledgling industry is seeing a boom in investment and sales growth: alternative energy. read more

Start-ups in a down economy

Nobody loves a recession*. But many successful entrepreneurs say that, in retrospect, they were lucky to have launched their businesses in tough times.

Case Study No. 1: How Method Weathered the Dot-com Bust

* A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters during which the country’s gross domestic product shrinks. It is too soon to say whether the economy is in a recession now.

When they look back on the early days of their start-up, Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan remember that a lot of potential investors laughed at them. The Bay Area, where they were living, was awash in Internet start-ups. Each week in 2000 brought another glitzy launch party or news that the scantest of business plans had attracted venture capital. Even office landlords were demanding equity from their dot-com tenants. Lowry and Ryan, who wanted to start a company to make — of all things — humdrum household products, were decidedly out of step with the times. “You had the sense that there was this real historical thing going on in the region, even if it was not going to end well,” says Ryan. read more