Some analysts are saying that we may be in for a very rough ride due to the state of the economy. Is it better to wait before starting a startup company? Some of the current big companies, such as Apple and Microsoft were started during a recession; so maybe it’s not such a bad time after all?

In reality it makes no difference whether or not there’s a recession on: It depends rather upon the person at the helm: If you have what it takes you’ll succeed despite recessions and economic turmoils. If you don’t then you’ll go under and nothing will stop that happening no matter how good the economic trends are in your favour.

That’s the opening theme of the message of the latest post on paulgraham.com . Read the rest of the article there before continuing to the next paragraph.

"…the time to start is always now." I couldn’t agree more: Maybe it could have been done easily in a different way yesterday. Maybe it’ll take a radical rethink to go ahead under current conditions: Better late than never; and if you’ve got the determination, nothing’s going to hold you back. Give it the radical rethink that it needs and go for it.

In a recession, money doesn’t disappear into a financial black-hole: It changes hands and ends up in different places. By doing so it affects the steady flow of capital wealth around the established financial structures. To escape from the situation the established structures are forced to change shape in order to get the cash flowing around the economy again, at which point the monetary system kicks back into gear, trading continues in a varied economic environment because it’s movement has been made favourable for those places where the money piled up when the economic machinery ground to a halt to start investing it again.

- But the above situation is just the core mechanism: Its operation has a knock-on effect for the rest of the economic structure too. The outer machinery of society must also evolve to encompass and fully utilise the structural changes at the core, or a part of the core, of the economy. It’s the forced core changes that start a recession rippling outwards into society in general. It’s the forced evolution of the machinery of society to fit into the new methods of operation that actually are what we call a recession.

So a recession is not so much a tragedy as a change in the traditional established methods of the commercial operations of society in general until they fit in tandem with the new set of the behaviours of the core machinery of finance and commerce. The trick is to follow, analyse, and make correct predictions: Predictions of the operations of the financial core machinery’s operations, coupled with predictions of the state of the evolution to change of the societal model in the light of those operations. having done so, adapt the interests of your startup to operate in tandem with that evolution of the societal model in the light of the new advancements, the given environments dependant upon location and circumstances, and any progress made during the period under analysis.

From these analyses and predictions we can generate a set of predictions, and hopefully a fairly accurate yet adaptable business model, based upon those predictions, which is flexible enough to weather any unexpected storms; to survive any unpredicted events, and to be already sailing by the time the waters are calm enough to make future competitors think about putting to sea.

Get in there first: Surprise the competition when they round the first bend and see you making such good progress that they can barely see what they have to beat being so far behind as you sail off into the horizon.

The early bird catches the worm; the latecomers just end up getting stuck in an empty wormhole.

Do you agree? If not why not?