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Clean-Tech Investment Is Falling: What Does It Mean?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 5, 2009 Comment (1)These days, clean technology is the rage among the political elites. And there is a great deal of support in Washington for companies developing these technologies. Unfortunately for the politicians, the venture capital market doesn't respond strongly to political rhetoric.
According to data recently released by NVCA, the National Venture Capital Association, investment in clean-technology start-ups fell 84 percent from the last quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009. The decline in clean-tech investment was much higher than the overall decline in venture capital investment, bringing clean-tech investment activity back to levels last seen in 2005, before the clean-tech investment craze began.
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Susan Boyle and Small Business
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2009 Comment (9)I think that even if you've been living in a cave, you've probably heard about Susan Boyle. She is the amazing singer who has become an international celebrity after her show-stopping performance on the Britain ' s Got Talent TV show.
The online success of the clip of Boyle singing is simply amazing. According to the online video measurement firm Visible Metrics, in less than five days, clips of her singing were viewed more than 47 million times and generated more than 125,000 comments.
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Small-Business Borrowing Still Hasn't Improved
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2009 Comment (28)I recently took a look at National Federation of Independent Business data on the satisfaction of small-business borrowing needs and was struck by the continued downward trend. According to the NFIB data, fewer small businesses said in March that their borrowing needs had been satisfied in the previous three months than at any point since well before the recession began.
In their monthly survey of a random sample of their members (who are small-business owners), the NFIB asks respondents whether their borrowing needs were satisfied in the previous three months. In the figure below, I have produced a chart of the seasonally adjusted percentage who said yes, along with the trend line.
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Business Success Sometimes Requires a Leap of Faith
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2009 Comment (1)"Sometimes you just have to jump. I call it a leap of faith. You don't get to know. You've studied as much as you can, you've talked to your customers, and you just jump off."
Those were the words of my seatmate yesterday on a small plane from Oregon to California. He was sharing the story of how his business, Imagine Graphics of Eugene, Ore., has rebuilt itself in recent years with a big new building, a new name, and a lot of new business. He and his wife own it. Business doubled in 2007 and did double-digit growth last year, and he's holding that growth rate this year.
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Revitalizing Cities Also Revitalizes Businesses
Tweet Share on Facebook April 6, 2009 CommentPlace Matters is a report from the think tank Center for American Progress that describes the importance of regional or local industrial clusters to economic growth and the creation of new jobs and companies.
Industrial clusters are geographic areas where groups of similar companies concentrate. The best-known cluster is Silicon Valley, but industrial clusters large and small exist in many places around the world.
The consulting firm McKinsey has released an interesting map of global industrial clusters. The map ranks clusters by size and growth rates and illustrates the growing number and diversity of industrial clusters.
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Statistics Can Deceive When It Comes to Small-Business Jobs
Tweet Share on Facebook April 6, 2009 CommentSo I'd say that I'm drowning in information lately, except that 1) you wouldn't be very sympathetic, because you are too; and 2) it's not information that oftenit's often half information or fake information, or merely good intentions.
Surveys and Statistics Vs. Truth
We forget so easily that when a survey shows X percent of respondents prefer Y over Z, that doesn't make it true. That means only that this survey, with this group of respondents, came out that way.
Maybe you took statistics in college, maybe not; and maybe you did but (like me) you've forgotten most of it. Remember this, though: If it doesn't start with a random sample, it's not likely to mean that much.
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Are Nonemployer Businesses Really Entrepreneurial?
Tweet Share on Facebook April 6, 2009 Comment (1)One of the difficult statistics for entrepreneurship researchers to understand is the vast majority of people who run their own businesses but have no employees. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2002 (the latest year for which data are available publicly), there were 23.3 million firms in operation in the United States. However, only 5.7 million of them (24.4 percent) were employer firms. That is, three quarters of U.S. entrepreneurs had no employees.
Moreover, most of these nonemployer businesses are truly tiny. According to the Census Department data, U.S. firms generated $22.8 trillion in revenue in 2002. But less than 3.4 percent of this revenue came from nonemployer firms. The average revenue of a nonemployer firm in 2002 was only $45,000.
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Don't Be So Hard on the Bankers
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2009 Comment (3)I hate to take an unpopular stand on something, but jeez, we’re making it awfully hard on the poor bankers.
For as long as I can remember, we in the world of entrepreneurship groused about how the banks wouldn't invest in a good business plan. Being a contrarian, I’ve tended, through some 30 years of this, to remind people that banking law used to forbid that. Ever since the Great Depression, regulations wanted banks to have collateral before they risked depositors’ money.
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The Angel Investment Crunch
Tweet Share on Facebook March 23, 2009 Comment (16)Business angels invest their own money in private companies run by someone other than a friend or family member. And accredited angel investors are the portion of these investors who meet Securities and Exchange Commission requirements for having either high net worth ($1,000,000 or more) or high income ($200,000 plus for single people and $300,000 plus for married couples).
Many people believe that accredited angel investors are an important source of early-stage financing for high-growth technology companies. Most angel groups are composed solely of accredited investors, and accredited angels are the ones that anecdotal evidence suggests provide pre-venture capital financing for many companies that ultimately go public or get acquired by public companies.
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Real Small-Business Stimulus Starts With SBDC
Tweet Share on Facebook March 19, 2009 Comment (5)Quietly, outside the headlines about bonuses and bailouts, the smarter entrepreneurs among us head to their local SBDC. There, they find classes on starting a business, classes on running a business, classes on business planning, tips, introductions...and sometimes just a touch of real-world experience, when it's badly needed.
SBDC stands for Small Business Development Center. There are about 1,000 of them across the United States. To find an SBDC near you, you can use the map at bplans.com or the umbrella organization website at asbdc-us.org.
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