Last year a record number of Americans started companies. Here's why becoming your own boss has become a national obsession.

Once upon a time, small business was seen solely as the domain of idiosyncratic, iconoclastic outsiders, willing to forgo the security of corporate life to venture out on their own. But today entrepreneurs are America's role models.

Almost everyone wants to own a business - from college students, who are signing up for entrepreneurial courses in record numbers; to those over age 65, who are forming more companies every year; to recent immigrants, who in 2005 started 25 percent more companies per capita than native-born citizens did.

This trend is of course flattering to established entrepreneurs: They were small before it was beautiful. But what does it mean in dollars and cents? A world full of new competitors - and new opportunities. All these nascent businesses require services, technology, and expertise - demands that have launched an echo boom of small businesses seeking to serve other small businesses.