Pres. Obama Promotes Comprehensive Small Business Initiative For Job Growth

Pres. Obama Tells Cabinet Promoting Small Business Is Top Priority

President Obama focused on promoting small businesses and spurring entrepreneurship Tuesday during the opening remarks of his first Cabinet meeting since his State of the Union address.

"One of the top priorities that I mentioned during the State of the Union was the need for us to promote small business. And I’m very pleased that we’ve got Karen Mills here, who has participated in our meetings before, but is now an official member of the Cabinet," Obama said.

This was the first meeting that Mills, the head of the Small Business Administration, has attended since being recently elevated to a Cabinet-level position.

"It is a symbol of how important it is for us to spur entrepreneurship, to help start-ups, to move aggressively," added Obama.

The president pressed Congress on both sides of the aisle to present a bill on his initiative to accelerate financing for start-ups and provide tax breaks for small businesses that want to hire more workers or increase wages.

"My expectation and hope is, is that they will get a bill together quickly, that they will pass it and get it on my desk. I will sign it right away, and I would like to see that bill signed this year," he said.


Sources: Small Business Solutions, The Hill, Whitehouse.gov, Youtube

Black Techies & Entrepreneurs Seek Their Piece Of Silicon Valley Too!

Despite Lies From GOP & Tea Party Leaders About How Dismal The American Economy Is, Many Economists Agree There's No Better Time To Start A Small Business Than Right Now! Especially In The Service & Technology Areas. And...Where Are The BLACK Bill Gates & Steve Jobs? Why Only ONE Black Techie? (Omar Wasow) It's High Time More Of Us Get Our Piece Of Silicon Valley's Pie Too!

‎"It's hard to find black geeks. We're out to start a movement that affirms the geek in you. A movement that says black geek is ok. We're out to support each other and grow an interest in tech in the people around us. We're out to solve hard problems and engage others. We're about being inclusive of all people, yet we have a special dream for our communities to become more engaged in tech. Here, the rubber meets the road. Welcome!" - Blacks In Tech Meet Up: http://www.meetup.com/NY-B​lacks-in-Tech/



Black entrepreneurs pitch their dreams to Silicon Valley

Hank Williams has performed dozen of times to audiences like the one here on Thursday at the Kapor Capital investment firm.

This time, however, the 46-year-old software veteran wasn't the only black person in the room, as is often the case at fundraising meetings in Silicon Valley.

Williams is a member of the NewMe Accelerator's inaugural class. The tech incubator was formed to help minorities get advice from successful executives and put their new Internet ventures in front of investors.

For two months, eight black entrepreneurs worked (and some lived) together in a rented house in Mountain View, California, which is the same city Google, a NewMe sponsor, calls home.

Having removed himself from the Silicon Valley technology scene for a decade, Williams re-emerged on Thursday to demonstrate the project he's been working on for four years with two colleagues in New York.

When Spaces begins testing in the next few weeks, people will be able to sign up for an online storage locker, which allows them to organize, search and transmit various types of data. It can handle files, e-mails, calendars, Twitter messages and other digital information that competitors generally don't facilitate.

The concept is unique, yet familiar to investors salivating over the unexpected success of another new Web-storage service, Dropbox. Williams' Kloud.co has been self-funded so far, but he is about ready to exchange equity in his company for cash.

Before the dotcom bubble burst a decade ago, Williams had raised $40 million for an Internet music service called Clickradio. But he is an anomaly of sorts in the Silicon Valley institution, where black people don't typically start Internet businesses and, for that or whatever other reason, rarely receive venture capital.

Despite his legacy and deep connections in Silicon Valley, Williams was nervous on demo day.

"I will never go up there in front of a roomful of people and not be nervous," he said in an interview afterward. "The tech industry is pretty clubby," he said earlier, and it often shuns prospects who "didn't go to Stanford or work at Google."

Among the presenters, Williams stood out not because he's a person of color but because he's the grayest of those who presented on stage, with salt-and-pepper hair on his head and face.

The rest of the class is fairly green when it comes to raising capital. Associating with this minority-focused Web startup group, an innovative idea in Silicon Valley, has helped them to secure meetings that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, said several of the entrepreneurs.

"People like to think of us in terms of what they already know," said Crisson Jno-Charles, one of the NewMe Accelerator participants. "The way Silicon Valley works is word of mouth."

Last year in Boston, Jno-Charles, a black computer programmer, began building Fetchmob, along with Alisa Boguslavskaya, who is not an ethnic minority but as a woman, is likewise a minority in the tech industry. Fetchmob is targeting colleges with an online marketplace for ordering groceries that other students can volunteer to deliver.

Another male-female duo started BeCouply, which makes an application for scheduling and chronicling dates. Statistically, blacks and women get little venture funding -- less than a tenth combined, according to some studies. BeCouply founders Pius Uzamere and Becky Cruze have another factor stacked against them: investors tend to shy away from entrepreneurs who are romantically involved, they learned.

"He's black; I'm a woman; we're a couple," Cruze said in an interview. "So we're screwed, right?"

Angela Benton, the NewMe event and group organizer who also pitched an app called Cued that offers restaurant recommendations based on a person's interests, said she would consider the incubator a success if three of the companies received funding.

Some investors here were more optimistic.

"The expectations aren't set, and we need to do something about that," said Mitch Kapor, a software pioneer turned venture capitalist who lent his office and contacts to the NewMe Accelerator.

James Joaquin, who attends the top incubator events and pitch presentations, said of the NewMe crop: "These entrepreneurs, these startups are at the same caliber."

Matt Van Horn, an executive at the venture-backed social networking company called Path, spoke at an event for the NewMe class and he agreed. "I've just seen a lot of growth," he said.

Joaquin is the CEO of a popular service for synchronizing bookmarks between Web browsers. He also finances young companies, a practice called angel investing. He added, "I think the majority of these companies will get angel investments."

He named Pencil You In as one of the standout presentations. The service, led by Tiffani Bell, lets people schedule haircut appoints online.

Other presentations included:

Aislefinder is a digital grocery list that tags each item with the aisle number the store stocks it in, as long as the product is among the 80,000 at 1,300 stores in the database. Users have made 12,000 shopping lists so far.

Playd, an app geared toward video-game players, is expected to launch this month.

Central.ly has a drag-and-drop website geared toward small businesses and is already bringing in revenue.

Wayne Sutton, whose service called Vouch lets users endorse associates via social networks, offered what sounded like music to a tech financier's ears. "We're going to have an API integrated with mobile apps, and we're going to make some money," he said in rapid succession, to laughter.

In a business environment that values teamwork, at least one person in this crop of entrepreneurs possesses a skill uncommon among the typical pasty-faced programmer.

Hajj Flemings, who co-founded a personal website builder called Gokit, concluded his speech saying: "I'm a former college athlete, and I always play to win."


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Sources: Black Techies, CNN, C-Span, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Urges Congress To Pass SBA Loan Expansion Bill

Obama Proposes Expansion of Small Business Loans


The President is proposing that Congress pass two temporary expansions of critical Small Business Administration (SBA) lending programs. These are both legislative proposals designed to help small businesses through what continues to be a difficult period in credit markets.

The President is proposing that Congress pass two temporary expansions of critical Small Business Administration (SBA) lending programs. These are both legislative proposals designed to help small businesses through what continues to be a difficult period in credit markets.

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1. Expand SBA’s existing program to temporarily support refinancing for owner-occupied commercial real estate loans:

Eligible small businesses will have commercial first mortgage loans or existing 504 first mortgage loans that are maturing in the next year. In order to qualify, businesses will have to be current on all loan payments for the previous year. Lenders that are refinancing mortgages for existing customers will make a loan for up to 70 percent of the current property value; and SBA will help finance the remaining 20 percent. For new lenders taking on a refinancing project, SBA will take on a greater share of financing, up to 40 percent.

SBA’s proposal for a temporary, zero-subsidy CRE refinancing program would be funded through additional fees for refinancing projects, not through a Congressional appropriation. This proposal will help refinance up to $18.7 billion each year in commercial real estate that might otherwise be foreclosed and liquidated.

2. Temporarily increase the cap on SBA Express loans from $350,000 to $1 million:

The President is proposing to temporarily increase the maximum SBA Express loan size to $1 million, which would expand the program’s ability to help a broad range of small businesses. Unlike traditional 7(a) loans, lenders can use their own paperwork for SBA Express loans, which can be structured as revolving lines of credit. Currently, these Express loans are capped at $350,000 and carry a 50 percent guarantee. Fees would cover virtually all of the added costs of this proposal.

These proposals complement the President’s broader small business agenda - a key part of his overall jobs plan. The other elements of the small business agenda include:

• Extending small business expensing and bonus depreciation for 2010. Eliminating capital gains for small businesses in 2010.

• A Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Credit that would cut taxes for more than 1 million small businesses by paying up to $5,000 for every net new job and covers payroll taxes on overall wage increases in excess of inflation.

• A $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund to provide capital for community banks and an incentive to increase lending to small businesses.

• Additional SBA lending proposals, including an extension of the Recovery Act programs that eliminate fees and raise guarantees on 7(a) loans and permanent increases in the maximum loan sizes for major SBA programs.


Sources: Fox News, CNN

Pres. Obama Restates His Commitment To America's Small Businesses...Weekly Address

(President Obama restates his commitment to small business as key to economic recovery -- from the Recovery Act to Financial Stability to Health Reform -- and pledges more to come.)




Sources: Whitehouse.gov

Pres. Obama Announces More Help For Small Business Owners...We'll See

(Obama announces help for small businesses: President Obama announces a series of steps to help small businesses get access to credit. Check out Recovery.gov)

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Sources: MSNBC, Recovery.gov, Keetsa