Finding a consistent thread through my thoughts is difficult; one of the few is “Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs”, an idea that describes the need for a fundamentally different model for for creating and funding micro-businesses in the Long Tail of the economy as our society shifts towards a more personal, collaborative and distributed system of value creation.

I submitted a proposal for a SXSW panel on the idea back in August; as expected, it has yet to be accepted.

But I find the theme continuing to crop up in my thoughts and discussions with entrepreneurs and their ideas. Perhaps entrepreneurs just like to envision an environment where they can raise capital and start their businesses, or maybe there is a cultural change: I’m not sure.

Perhaps a broader economic downturn will create a more favorable environment for “too small to fail” startups and small companies: perhaps the push will be to get smaller, not larger, to “act small and think big”. I’m intrigued by the idea that an economic downturn could incent millions of people to start their own businesses as large company layoffs eliminate the cushy, lucrative jobs created by a bubble of fake, misplaced economic value creation. We’ll see.

In any case, I’ll be at SXSW Interactive in March 2009.

Series of posts building up to and thrashing around the idea:

• Is this what we need? Is this what we want? (April 10th on taylordavidson.com)
• Do we need a new funding model for starting businesses? (June 4th on taylordavidson.com)
• How can we create a funding model for lifestyle businesses? (June 12th on taylordavidson.com)
• Venture Capital for the Long Tail (July 21st)
• Venture capital creates real options (August 8th)
• Want to hear more about Venture Capital for Long Tail Entrepreneurs at SXSW? (August 8th)
• Markets in Everything: Innovation in Angel Capital (Sept 2nd)

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