FluxFlowers said:
My motivation is to have creative control over what I do in my day to day routine.
That's a bad reason for starting a small business.
I've worked in a small technology start-up and in fact the CEO and officers often have very little creative control over what they do. You have to constantly answer to both funders and customers. There's an old saying "when I worked in a big company, I had one boss, but now that I have my own company, I have hundreds of bosses. They are called customers."
Once you make enough money, you can more freedom to do what you want, but this is also true in large companies. If you have a history of high productivity then when you come up with a weird idea, then people will listen to you.
The other thing is that most successful small businesses aren't technology, but rather bread and butter things like running a hotel or opening a pizza restaurant.
Bad reasons for starting a small business are control and making money. Good reasons are personal challenge, personal satisfaction, and self-education, and also if you want to look at things from a "holistic" standpoint. If you work in a big company, you see one part of a large whale which no one understands completely. If you work in a small company, you can see how all of the different parts fit together.
If you work in a big company, accounting will do payroll for you and legal will worry about business law. If you work in a small company, you'll have to understand the basics of payroll and business law (and neither is complex).
I realize its a bit idealistic, but I'm still in college and as long as I don't have a family to provide for, I'd prefer to dream big and try my hand in a high risk venture.
Most entrepreneurs tend to be older. Once you have some savings and the kids are no longer kids, then you can do lots of risky things. The other thing is that a hero is a coward with no other options, and I've known a lot of successful small business owners that started their small business out of desperation more than anything else.
As far as what to do, this is one of those things where there is no cookbook, and you just talk to people that have done it before, and figure out what to do. Network. Network. Network. Talk to alumni. Visit the chamber of commerce. Join the MIT Enterprise Forum (which is open to non-MIT students). The two things that you need is capital and customers.
The legal parts are pretty simple (i.e. set up payroll, get some accounting software, file incorporation papers). Go to a book store and buy the Nolo Guides. One thing that you'll find is that government bureaucrats and tax officials are very helpful.
It's also a good idea to talk to people that you know that have opened small businesses (i.e. I know a lot of people that own Chinese restaurants) since a lot of the skills that you need to run a restaurant are the same as those to run something in technology.
http://www.mitef.org/