Your Entrepreneur Handbook: Spirit - Southwest Airlines

Last night I was on a short flight from San Francisco to Los Angles. If you know me, you already that I'm a big fan of Southwest. In this day and age of extra charges for rescheduling, checked baggage, leg space etc., all these are free with SW. As the plane took off I picked up the in-flight magazine (which I rarely do) and started browsing. It turns out the main story inside is about entrepreneurs and small business. After I finished reading I whipped out my iPhone and took some notes for you guys.

Your Entrepreneur Handbook: Southwest Airlines Spirit September 2009

Fun facts

Percentage of entrepreneurs who say they launched first venture as a child – 42%

Avg hours a week small business owners work – 52 hours

Avg revenue of small biz with a website – 5 million

Percentage of employers that small business represent – 99.7%

Estimated new ventures a year – 7 million

Percentage of entrepreneurs who will still run their business in 6 yrs – 33.3%

Number of small businesses – 25.8 million

Small business who say losing Internet would make them go bust – 18%

46% of small businesses are financed with personal credit card

Avg years a small biz survives – 11.2 years

Percentage of total new jobs small biz create annually – 60% to 80%

Percentage of business that receive venture capital – Less than 1%

Avg revenue of a small business – $3.6 million

Part of the population starting new business – 7%

Blogs

techcrunch.com

feld.com

sethgodin.typepad.com

freakonomics.com

Books

The Long Tail - Chris Anderson

Good to great - Jim Collins

The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

Twitter feeds

Jack_welch

Scobleizer

Mcuban

Johnabyrne

After constantly being reminded of the fact that few startups survive, the above points were really encouraging. Hope this article inspires you as well. If you would like to read the whole article jump on a southwest flight.

Update: After a quick google search, turns out that I need not have typed everything up everything on the iPhone to share later. Here is the online link and here is the pdf version.