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Now, after more than a decade of breakneck
growth, as well as several months of economic
slowdown, the entrepreneurs of "Sin City" face
three concurrent challenges. How entrepreneurs
handle these challenges will determine whether
they succeed or, like many migrants to Las
Vegas, fail and then leave town, just more
dreamers who gambled and lost.
A Land of Promise
In many ways, Las Vegas seems a natural
destination for entrepreneurs, for dreamers and
schemers planning to strike it rich in the
desert. "Vegas draws people who are
adventuresome, since it is a city focused on
taking chances," says Sharolyn Craft, counseling
director at the Nevada Small Business
Development Center. "In most cities, people
moving there already have a job when they
arrive. But many people move to Vegas without a
job, hoping to set up a business here."
Location Is Everything
Find out which other cities made our 2002 Best
Cities for Entrepreneurship.
Paula Yakubik, 30, co-founder of Mass
Media/Vanguard, a marketing firm with 11
employees in Las Vegas, understands what Craft
means. "Vegas loves entrepreneurs, and it's a
young city compared to New York or Los Angeles,
so it embraces its young," she says. "I can go
to a meeting with a client who's 55 and be
treated like an equal."
The city's most famous figure, Brooklyn-born
mobster Bugsy Siegel, was a self-starting
dreamer. In the 1940s, Siegel moved to Vegas,
which had already legalized gambling but had
only a few dingy betting parlors, with the idea
of turning the city into a tourist destination
by building gleaming casinos, taking craps,
roulette and other games upscale. In December
1946, he opened the swank Flamingo Hotel, a
luxurious and profitable gambling joint that
triggered the fast growth of the Vegas Strip. By
2001, the city was drawing more than 36 million
visitors a year.
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