Last week Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went back to his old business school, Stanford, and spoke to a class of students studying entrepreneurship.  And he told them that this is "really a good time to start a business."  The global economic crisis, as bad as it is, has provided a corrective measure for good entrepreneurs. Ideas that are worth funding will get it, while bad ideas will not take advantage of a broken system.  “The ideas that weren’t good enough shouldn’t have been funded and they won’t be funded today,” Ballmer tells the students.  And "there may be more opportunites in the long run, even if the Entrepreneurial opportunities are less 'frothy' than they might have been in the short run."  Here is Ballmer's lecture: