In these dark economic times, if you have lost your job it may be worthwhile to think counter-intuitively.

Make your own work. Paul Graham makes a great case for it.

“Our bodies weren’t designed to eat the foods that people in rich countries eat, or to get so little exercise. There may be a similar problem with the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us intellectually as white flour or sugar is for us physically.”

“The root of the problem is that humans weren’t meant to work in such large groups. … Though they’re statistically abnormal, startup founders seem to be working in a way that’s more natural for humans.”

As an inveterate freelance worker most of my life, I totally agree with Graham’s analysis. In between I’ve worked for a mega-corp, BT (British Telecom), and for Government, the UK’s Central Office of Information. In each case I was a whale out of water.

It’s only when I started businesses around my personal template, or became a freelance writer breathing the air of freedom, that I came fully into my own. Most people are probably like this.

Paul Graham — who is a venture capitalist — is right. You can buck the system, and you owe it to yourself to make the attempt.

Incidentally, a recession is a great time to go it alone. Venture capitalists have money burning a hole in their vaults, there’s a surfeit of experts going cheap, and opportunities for anyone with a great idea or a new approach.

Innovation is at a premium during a downturn. Many of the biggest names in corporate America began in a garage during a recession when there was little else to do.

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Back in January, Larry Chiang wrote an informative piece over at GigaOm on which venture capitalists to avoid.

No names are mentioned, just their characteristics. He offers a list of nine VC archetypes you’ll definitely want to avoid, just as soon as you hit the $900,000-mark.

Here are the first three to get you in the mood:

1) Mr. Armchair. He’s a Friday afternoon Chairman. He knows exactly what he’d do as board member of facebook, Google, MySpace.,YouTube. Too bad his portfolio company’s don’t get the same enthusiastic coverage.

2) Mr. One-Hit-Wonder. Yes he sold Postage.com for $200 million (and kept $15 million) so if you wanna hear war stories from the ’90s, take this GSB alum’s money.

3) Mr. Spray-n-Pray. He cites being founding CEO as his Operations experience. (Translation: He was a interim CEO for his last venture firm before company/portfolio implosion and subsequent fund implosion. His fund is a catch-all and he tries to participate in every Sequoia backed deal.

Read the rest of the article here.

Jamie Murray Wells, 24, Old Harrovian friend of Prince William and Kate Middleton, sells glasses on the internet at one-tenth of the price they retail in the High Street.

So successful has his business become that he has attracted £3million ($6m) of venture capital funding. His next plan is to take on the lucrative American market

Jamie started out with only his student loan, and some help from his father, who is also an entrepreneur. Simon is an investment analyst, while his mother, Alison, buys up cottages for holiday renting and, for good measure, imports local products from Morocco. His maternal grandfather, Wendall Clough, helped bring Ford and Chrysler to Britain.

In the past few years, Jamie has gone head-to-head with High Street giants like Specsavers and Vision Express for dominance of Britain’s multi-billion-pound glasses market.

He says, “We currently sell 300 to 400 pairs a day. This injection of cash means we could be selling thousands.”

Enterprising he may be, cheeky he certainly is. He recently bombarded Newcastle city centre with men in sheep costumes implying the High Street was “fleecing” consumers. “I love the fact that this business is causing trouble,” he says. “At school I used to behave terribly. Even at university I’d do things like make the campus Christmas tree disappear, watch the uproar and then mysteriously return it.”

Glasses Direct was conceived while he was reading for his final exams at the University of the West of England in Bristol. He set up the website after he discovered the huge cost of spectacles on the High Street, although they cost as little as £7 to make.

He remarks, “I would walk out of the examination room and go straight to the library to use the computers for my business. What gives me kicks is bringing something new into the world. I’m not into starting up just another optician. I want a market-changing business.”

Jamie employs 30 staff in Wiltshire, England and is recruiting for a new London office. Turnover is predicted to rise to £10million by 2008.

Location, location, location is said to be the mantra of real estate salesmen. Does the same apply to starting a business? Of course, but there are exceptions to every rule and sometimes the flipside becomes the upside.

How, for example, could you start a business in the middle of nowhere, miles from what we now call civilization?

It’s not easy, but something with computers and the Internet springs to mind, doesn’t it? But what if you’re a technophobe and hopeless with computers?

Well, all is not lost. Take the amazing story of John Fanuzzi who moved from Philadelphia to Montana in 1980 with everything he owned in the back of a pickup, including his two children of five and two years of age. He was a single father and had a lot on his plate.

He’d done a bit of project managing in the past and was a skilled carpenter. His business idea was to build a company in the unlikely field of massage tables.

Fanuzzi was in this situation because he had injured his back and a doctor said it couldn’t be treated. He was cured, however, by a single visit to a massage therapist. Who says alternative treatments don’t work?

The therapist had told him that it was impossible for him to source a portable massage table for the patients who couldn’t come to him. John was so grateful for his cure, he replied without thinking, “No problem, I’ll make you one.”

He began building it in his driveway, having spent $100 on materials and costs. It was so successful, the news got out and soon orders came flooding in. The problem was, John didn’t have enough to fork out $100 for each table while it was being made. He bridged the gap by asking for a deposit of $100 for each table, then charged $185 for the completed item. Classic bootstrapping methodology. Fanuzzi was in an ideal situation. He had no overheads and lots of customers.

After the move to Montana, he persuaded local teenagers to assemble his products for piece-rate wages and even shipped them on Greyhound buses.

Later, in the 1990s, Golden Ratio Woodworks, based in Emigrant, Montana, became an established and going concern. He was doing $200,000 of business a year. His debts were almost zero and customers paid in cash.

Then it took off in more sophisticated areas of the U.S, like California and the East coast, where buyers thought it “kinda folksy” to order from Montana.

In just a few years, John Fanuzzi had built a national business employing dozens of workers. He had done it with no capital and used basic cash-flow techniques to accomplish his personal American Dream.