All the @ replies I got to this were "You're crazy, it's way easier now." And I agree that it is both more acceptable to start a company and that there is more access to capital.

But I still think it is harder now, particularly for first-time entrepreneurs, because there are now accepted routes and strategies for how to create a company. An entire credentialing system now exists that didn't before that increases your early chances of being noticed. There is a wider range of experts (people who've had some previous success) telling you what you should do.

I think it's easier for young entrepreneurs to get wrapped around the axle of "I guess this is how it's done." Whereas before there was less presumed clarity about how to start.

That's a fascinating question. Common knowledge is no because there is so much more support and information available.

When I look at even the wisdom available on the web about designing products, raising money, and developing stuff, compared to what was there when I started my first (or second) company, it's like I was operating with the lights off.

On the other hand, if you're talking about an *Internet* company, in some ways it's harder for a different reason than you mention which is: The industry is simply much more mature. The holes aren't as obvious. The bar has been raised. And competition is fierce.

It's true there are more playbooks and people offering advice. But in some ways I wonder if that just makes it harder as well. You've got lots of folks saying "Trust me – I've had this big success. Do it this way." Some of the questions I heard at Techstars last week were of the variety "What's a quantitative way to know it's going well."

And I think that's really distorting because so often it comes down to relying on your gut and hunching it out (yes, with the benefit of good data and advice, but still.)

So to the extent that there's a lot more "accepted" ways of doing things, I would imagine it'd be harder for first-time entrepreneurs to think that everyone else really has it figured out already.

It's more expensive now than before. Talent (people) are more expensive. But platform support is way more complicated. When we provided the first seed round to Tumblr in 2007 it was a year before the iOS App Store existed. And there wasn't an android marketplace. They didnt have to think about OpenGraph support etc

Two engineers built and operated that site for 18months. Now startups need to support/consider mobile, mobile web and desktop web.

Client side device diversity is good for consumers but much harder for developers.

The platform diversity point is a really good one as its forcing web developers into a more gated mode of building and releasing things. In many ways it's more like burning software to CDs than ever before.

One other thing on the platform piece tho: technically it's also cheaper to get started because of the ubiquity of platform solutions. The hardware/co-lo side of things is no longer a factor for many consumer businesses.

in 2007 we had AWS and LAMP which is why 2007 is much more capital efficient than 1997-2000 where startups were literally buying hardware and Oracle licenses (oy).

but i'm not sure we are more capital efficient in 2012 than 2007. or at least the assignment is trickier in some ways.