Virtual Entrepreneur

Asheville Citizen-Times:
These are not the best of financial times to be starting up a business.

The nation lost more than 500,000 jobs in November, retail sales are the worst in three decades, and investors’ retirement funds have dropped by more than a third.

Local entrepreneurship has slowed some in the wake of those challenges but probably not as much as you might think. Some new business owners believe so strongly in their ideas and have such a passion for transforming the notion into reality that they have forged ahead despite the recession.

“It’s an idea I’ve had for several years now, and it’s been nagging away at me in the back of my mind,” said Tonya Clanton, who opened Growing Young Café on Tunnel Road last summer. “I do think I have a good chance of making it, but I’ve definitely been hindered by the economy and the gas crunch in September. But if it doesn’t make it, hey, at least I tried. If it does make it, I’ll feel like a rock star.”

Western North Carolina has a lot of aspiring “rock stars” out there.

Dale Carroll, president and chief executive officer of AdvantageWest, a nonprofit, public-private economic development commission chartered by the state and covering 23 western counties, sees a lot of them. AdvantageWest operates the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council and the Blue Ridge Angel Investors Network.

Carroll said interest in their entrepreneurial programs has actually increased lately. That’s partly driven by $750,000 in available funding for phase two of their Advantage Opportunity Fund program and partly by an independent streak in mountain residents…

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