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Yahoo! Poll Shows Majority Of American Adults Have Entrepreneurial Aspirations And The Internet Has Made Launching A Small Business Easier

Sunnyvale, CA -- April 20, 2005 -- Three in four American adults (72 percent) have considered starting their own businesses and a similar percentage (75 percent) said the Internet has made it easier to launch a small business, according to a new survey commissioned by Yahoo! Small Business and conducted by Harris Interactive. In addition, nearly half of those who have considered starting a business but haven't yet (47 percent) said they would "never be too old" to do so.
The nationwide survey of more than 2,200 U.S. adults is being released in advance of National Small Business Week, April 25-29. The survey, conducted earlier this month, measured sentiment among the general population about aspirations for owning a small business and the role of the Internet in enabling the start up of small businesses.

Hotel Booking The survey results suggest that entrepreneurial aspirations are rooted among the vast majority of the American public. The survey also supports research from the Untied States Small Business Administration indicating that the small business sector will continue to be a key factor in economic growth and job creation.* Of those adults surveyed with entrepreneurial goals, half (51 percent) would like to launch their business within the next five years.

Polling shows the majority of Canadians, Americans and Europeans want the commercial seal hunt ended for good, and governments around the world are taking action.

Travel Agency "For many people, entrepreneurship is a cornerstone of their vision of the American dream. Fortunately, continuing innovation in technology, and particularly the Internet, has helped make starting a business more attainable than ever before," said Rich Riley, vice president and general manager, Yahoo! Small Business. Riley, a former entrepreneur whose business was acquired by Yahoo!, leads the division of Yahoo! that powers more than 30,000 online stores. Yahoo!'s award-winning portfolio of small business services includes solutions for Web hosting, domain names, business email, and e-commerce.

Critics point out that the economy is doing well outside of EMU, and public opinion polls show a majority of Britons are opposed to the euro.

Cheap Hotel The survey showed that higher percentages of men than women have thought about starting their own businesses, but a significant majority of women (66 percent) said they have small business dreams. In fact, 24 percent of men and 16 percent of women (19 percent overall) indicated that they had already started a business of some type.

In fact, print books are a modern and entrepreneurial group who have embraced the Internet to sell books.

Flight Booking Additional survey results include:

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Travel Agent Money doesn't buy happiness
The Yahoo! survey showed that money was not at the top of the list of priorities for aspiring entrepreneurs, when asked to identify the main reason for wanting to start a business:

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Hotel Chicago * Passionate hobby/to do work I love (28 percent)
* Be my own boss (25 percent)
* To make more money (18 percent)
* Create something people need (11 percent)
* For the challenge (10 percent)
* To get rich (or nearly rich) (6 percent)
* Other (3 percent)

Online Booking Late in life career options
In addition to indicating that age was not a determining factor in giving up on entrepreneurial aspirations, a majority (56 percent) of those who have thought about starting their own business but haven't yet said owning a business was a type of work they would want to do later in life. Other careers these respondents would want to do later in life include:

Travel Health Insurance * Volunteering/Public Service (36 percent)
* Consulting (26 percent)
* Teaching (22 percent)
* Retail/customer service (14 percent)
* Corporate office/board member (13 percent)
* Run for office (10 percent)
* Sales (7 percent)
* Other (16 percent)
* Don't want to work (12 percent)

Hotel Reservation Aspiring entrepreneurs also listed a wide range of specific preferred choices for late in life businesses they would launch, including: healer/spiritual advisor, crafting for profit, sport fishing charters, performing belly dancing, gunsmith, and yarn shop.

London Hotel Booking "Small Business Week is an important opportunity to focus attention on the courage, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit of small business owners -- including the hundreds of thousands of Yahoo! Small Business customers that offer quality and value to their customers each day," said Riley. "Yahoo! is committed to helping small businesses succeed online, with our comprehensive solutions and with helpful free information from our Small Business Resource Center."

Discount Travel * - The SBA reports that small businesses generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade. Additional research findings can be found at the SBA website: www.sba.gov.

Orlando Hotel Methodology for Survey
Harris Interactive fielded the study on behalf of Yahoo! Small Business from April 1-5, 2005 via its QuickQuerySM online omnibus, interviewing a nationwide sample of 2,290 U.S. adults aged 18 and over, of whom 1,218 have thought about starting their own business but haven't yet. Data were weighted to be representative of the total U.S. adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and propensity to be online. Select data were weighted to be representative of the total U.S. adult online population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and amount of time spent online. Though this online sample is not a probability sample, in theory, with a probability sample of this size, Harris Interactive estimates with 95 percent certainty that the results for the overall sample have a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Sampling error for the following sub-sample results: those who have thought about starting their own business but haven't yet (1,218), men (1,073) and women (1,217) is higher and varies.

Booking Agency About Harris Interactive
Harris Interactive Inc. (www.harrisinteractive.com), the 15th largest and fastest-growing market research firm in the world, is a Rochester, N.Y.-based global research company that blends premier strategic consulting with innovative and efficient methods of investigation, analysis and application. Known for The Harris Poll and for pioneering Internet-based research methods, Harris Interactive conducts proprietary and public research to help its clients achieve clear, material and enduring results.

International Travel Medical Harris Interactive combines its intellectual capital, databases and technology to advance market leadership through U.S. offices and wholly owned subsidiaries: London-based HI Europe (www.hieurope.com), Paris-based Novatris (www.novatris.com), Tokyo-based Harris Interactive Japan, through newly acquired WirthlinWorldwide, a Reston, Virginia-based research and consultancy firm ranked 25th largest in the world, and through an independent global network of affiliate market research companies. EOE M/F/D/V

New York Hotel About Yahoo! Small Business
Yahoo! Small Business (http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com) is a leading provider of essential online small business services and content. In a powerful one-stop shop, Yahoo! Small Business integrates one of the world's leading web hosting solutions with business critical services and information that enable small businesses to get online, sell online and market online. Yahoo! Small Business includes services such as Yahoo! Web Hosting, Yahoo! Domains, Yahoo! Business Mail, and the e-commerce platform called Yahoo! Merchant Solutions. Yahoo! Small Business provides effective and valuable products and services that are easy to use, and is the proud recipient of the PC Magazine Editors' Choice award for both the Yahoo! Domains and the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions products.

Online Travel Booking About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Yahoo! provides online products and services essential to consumers' lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users around the world. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.

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