A note from our editor, Elizabeth MacBride:
“We see our clients projecting a financial cliff,” I heard today from Aurora, Ill.
I was lucky to observe a roundtable discussion with eight founders and Congressmen French Hill (R-AR), Bill Foster (D-IL) and David Schweikert (R-AZ). The entrepreneurs were all in the b-to-b space; some serve Main Street or grassroots entrepreneurs. The roundtable was put on the Center for American Entrepreneurship. The Congressmen, who floated ideas for more R&D funding and government-backed venture investments, hoped for a rosier view than was presented by the entrepreneurs – which is troubling, given that entrepreneurs are typically overly optimistic.
My takeaways:
• The risk faced by Main Street entrepreneurs is high. “We see our clients projecting a financial cliff,” said Jimi Allen, founder of Aurora-Ill.-based marketing agency Bureau Gravity. As goes small business, goes the economy. Outside health care and government, our main private industry employers now are companies in retail, leisure and professional services: 62 million jobs out of 169 million.
• One of the entrepreneurs, Danny Ellis, co-founder of Ann Arbor, Mich-based SkySpecs, noted how much less worried his employees in Denmark were. There, he said, everyone has state-run health care, retirement and daycare systems.
• The federal aid programs sustained many businesses through the spring and summer. Now, all bets are off, as even some venture-backed companies lose momentum. Whatever Congress does, ought to be done rapidly, said Rita Hansen, the co-founder of Onboard Dynamics in Bend, Ore.
• The panel reflected funding realities across the country. Women and people of color, who make up the majority of today’s new entrepreneurs, were not able to access the aid programs or capital from sources such as the private equity markets, which are more open to white men.
I was touched by the obvious capability of the entrepreneurs on the call. They cared for each other, and the different perspectives each was bringing to the table.
It was a stark contrast to what’s happening in Washington, D.C., where the federal stimulus and a Supreme Court nomination seem to have become a set of personal political joysticks in the hands of a mentally unstable, ill president. The uniform wish I heard from everyone on the call: Let’s get back to the business of building.
Please send me your ideas for my interview series of 25 women founders around the globe in DeepTech at [email protected]. I’ll be gathering names for a few weeks.
— Elizabeth MacBride, founder of Times of Entrepreneurship
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Date: October 7, 4-5 pm ET
Information available here.
Learn how to assess the financial health of your business, the best ways to evaluate the impact of an uncertain environment, how to analyze different funding options and more in this webinar from Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses.
The Year of Dangerous Days: Riots, Refugees and Cocaine in Miami in 1980
Date: October 7, 5-6:15 pm
Information available here.
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Invest South Jersey
Date: October 8, 11:30 am to 1 pm
Information available here.
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Follow the Entrepreneur (FTE) Investment Campaign and Summit
Dates: Oct. 10-14
Location: Athens, Greece (event will also be live streamed)
Information available here.
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Date: October 12-14
Location: Virtual
Information available here.
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Deadline for applications: October 19, 2020
Location: Virtual
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For more information, write to: [email protected].
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