Maybe you’re writing the business plan for your news business in the evenings or weekends, or perhaps you’re taking a “personal” day from work to go pitching the new business idea to the VC’s.

Work load levels aside, there are plenty of benefits to going GaragePowered, the primary one being control. Besides signing over a large percentage of your company to VCs, you’ll be giving up a large amount of control when you taken on VC’s as investors. VC’s will usually require seats on the board of investors and involvement in all major decisions.

It’s not all bad though, for their investment VC’s can provide some valuable help. They work with a many startups so can provide you with lots of advice on how to structure and run your business. VC’s are also well connected in the industry and can open doors that would normally be shut to you. Other investors, potential clients, or good employee’s could come easier with a referral from a VC.

If you go the GaragePowered route you remain the one in charge of your business, you live and die by your decisions. You are taking all the risks, and get all the rewards from those risks. GaragePowered is a good option for the controls freaks out there, with limited funds and a small team, the GaragePowered entrepreneur will need to be involved in all aspects of the business.

The lack of capital for the GaragePowered is not always a bad thing. Well funded startups often lose their focus, and companies flush with investment dollars worry more about launch parties, and big new offices than their business. Being forced to keep a close eye on every penny spent helps your you hone in on what is really important to the success of your business.

Ultimately not all business can be GaragePowered, the dollars required to start some businesses will put them out of the reach of most Garage Entrepreneurs, but for those that can its makes for a very viable way to start your business.

There have been many discussions as whether you should start a company during a recession or during a boom time, but I think most of those discussions are targeted more at companies looking to raise money from a VC.

As a potentially VC backed company your primary goal is to gain investment capital, once you’ve done that you can turn your attention to business of doing business. External factors that affect the VC’s will impact your ability to raise capital. Factors such as stock market moves, Federal Reserve interest rate changes affect how much investment capital the VCs have on hand, the overall state of the economy will affect how likely the VCs are to actually invest in any or specifically your business.

For those GaragePowered you jump right into building your company, the overall state of the economy may affect the likely hood that you’ll be able to find consumers for your products, however if you have a product that people need they are likely to buy it regardless of the current economic situation. Also, if you have a product that will save your customers money (either because it costs less then existing comparable products, or through efficiencies) poor economic times may prove to be better times for your business.

If you’re bootstrapping your business, then costs are very important factor in running your business. A poor economic climate might be just what you’re looking for. Businesses are more likely to offer you good rates when times are slow, from contracts on hosting to hiring specialists (designers, developers, whatever you need) you’ll probably be able to find better deals during slow times, then during economic boom times.

Sounds like economic down times are a great time to get going, but depending on your business you want to get ahead of the curve. If you have a product or service that consumers will want during down times, you’ll need to get going before the economy gets there.

Ultimately for the right idea there is no bad time to start, and no good time, whenever you decide you are ready is the best time. For a bad idea, well you just shouldn’t start those!