I just read Maureen Mackey’s interview with Bill Murphy Jr., author of The Intelligent Entrepreneur – Why a bad economy is good for entrepreneurs – and a few things jumped out at me.

A tough economy can work in an entrepreneur’s favor
I’ve learned this lesson first-hand. My friends told me I was crazy for starting a company in the midst of the dot com crash (2001). Maybe I was. But the crash and the resulting drought of investment dollars taught me some valuable lessons. First, only the most committed entrepreneurs were left doing what they were doing before internet tech startups became sexy – building successful businesses. It became very clear, very fast who was just there for the over-the-top dot-com parties, Kozmo deliveries and foosball. Second, you had to focus on creating value without resources because, well, you didn’t have any. There was no way to grow your business or to get anyone to invest unless you could prove your business model. Funnily enough, many of us learned how to do just that.

Prove your model, then get financing
Fast forward to 2010. Not the best economy either, but now we founders can do even more with less using resources like WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Survey Monkey, Craigslist, Paypal and more. I see plenty of entrepreneurs starting businesses and creating value for their customers before they even think about raising money. At the same time, investors are looking for that proof because they are battling the same economic constraints entrepreneurs face.

There’s little good education for entrepreneurs
Obviously, David and I couldn’t agree more – that’s why we started UpStart Bootcamp! Bill suggests training post-college and mid-career, as well as in high-school and college classrooms. He’s doing his part too, with a new book, The Intelligent Entrepreneur: How Three Harvard Business School Graduates Learned the 10 Rules of Successful Entrepreneurship.