By the end of 2009, the Great Recession had claimed the jobs of between 18 and 50 million people across the world, according to the International Labor Organization. As many of these individuals struggle to keep their heads above water, some are taking the plunge into starting their own businesses. In the US, the Kauffman Foundation’s Index of Entrepreneurial Activity shows that in the year of recession, 2008, more people started a new business than in 2007 – averaging 530,000 new business created per month.

The entrepreneurs of the downturn have much to contend with. Even during the good times, between 1998 and 2005, only two thirds of new small businesses got through their first two years, and just 44% survived for four years. And the recession has brought out a new breed of business people – these unintentional entrepreneurs are in the game not for opportunity but out of necessity, and with jobs hard to find, they are without the safety net of a potential quick return back to positions in big organisations.

But despite the challenges, many are approaching the task with relish, and in the spirit of the connected internet age, they are finding ways to help each other. The Unintentional Entrepreneur initiative was set up as a collaboration between Outright.com, a company that offers free bookkeeping software for small businesses, and Network Solutions, a firm that provides web hosting and marketing for small businesses.

The initiative started off with meet-ups for entrepreneurs in five cities across the United States, where well-known speakers gave an audience of some 250 people in each city the benefit of their experience, as well as instructing people in the basic tools of business, like marketing fundamentals, how to network and how to file business taxes. Since then, the initiative has taken on a life of its own, through its online community on LinkedIn and on the dedicated website, and people across the United States are hosting their own events with the blessing of the Unintentional Entrepreneur team.

Paul O’Brien of Unintentional Entrepreneur and Outright.com says that the striking feature of the accidental entrepreneurs he’s encountered is their optimism: “The resounding response in regard to the challenges seems to be, I’ve been removed from an organisation in which the challenges were political and bureaucratic.”

Gone is the need to navigate complex policies and structures. Gone is the need to deal with existing opinions and business practices. Gone is the struggle to swim against the current in order to enable real change. Life as your own boss does have its perks. And even though starting your own business has plenty of challenges – not least of which is that your livelihood is at stake – you own your destiny, and your success or failure is on your shoulders.

“There’s a tremendous sense of freedom that comes with that,” O’Brien says, “The negative impact of the economy has forced people to look inside themselves and really pursue something that they love, instead of chasing capitalism.”

Lisa Marie Grillos of Hambone Designs, one of the people Unintentional Entrepreneur has helped, agrees. She started her business, which makes handmade bicycle bags for holding things like keys, wallets and mobile phones, after her employment contract was not renewed.

Grillos says the decision to start her own business was an easy one: “I had to direct my energy somewhere, and why not into a new business that I could work on building from the ground up.” She says that the key for entrepreneurs is to, “pick something you are passionate about. You are going to spend many, many hours on this – much more than you would at a full time job working for someone else, so it has to be something that you love to do and believe in.”

Even in these tough times, entrepreneurs have more going for them than just enthusiasm and passion. For one thing, starting up a business has never been cheaper. O’Brien explains that, “it is ridiculously inexpensive to start your own business these days, and that’s much more true today than it was even five years ago, both because of the increasingly reduced costs of products and things that you need to get going, and also because of the connectivity that’s been enabled due to the web.”

The new tools provided by the internet are a godsend to small businesses trying to keep down costs – Grillos used Etsy.com to open a virtual shop, O’Brien’s Outright.com enables small businesses to keep the books without getting in a tangle, and social media tools like LinkedIn and Facebook enable entrepreneurs to network and to reach out to new customers and partners in an unprecedented way.

Recessions come and go, and some of the new businesses will fall even as the economy rises. But it’s worth remembering that Microsoft and Apple, the giants of computing, grew up in the recession of the 1970s – and changed the world on their way. Some of today’s unintentional entrepreneurs may well turn out to be tomorrow’s unassailable enterprises.