Homepreneur

SHOOT: Way of the future.

clipped from www.businessweek.com New research shows the economic importance of home-based businesses: They account for more than half of all U.S. businesses and employ more people than venture-backed companies Ask Stephen Labuda, the 35-year-old president of Agency3, a Web development firm he runs from his home in Cambridge, Mass. A former programmer at Deutsche Bank (DB), Labuda started building Web sites as a side job in 2003 and took the venture full time three years later. Agency3's revenue is in the millions, and Labuda is about to hire his fifth employee, who will work remotely, like the rest of the staff and the slew of contractors he taps. "I'm not intending to go rent office space," he says. Now, Labuda never feels that his working from home damages Agency3's credibility. Instead, it's a selling point. "It's reflected in our pricing that we don't have the same kind of infrastructure costs and fixed costs that some of our competitors do," he says.