
Obama: $15B for Small Businesses - gne1963
http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/obama-15b-for-small-businesses.html
======
grandalf
So Obama is encouraging small businesses to take on debt, and increasing the
extent to which taxpayers are accountable if the business fails!

This is a very narrow policy that will not help most small businesses,
particularly not most tech startups, etc. Most of us either bootstrap or take
VC funding -- neither of which have any hope of taxpayer bailout!

This makes a great headline for Obama but is not doing anything for the
valley.

~~~
gnaritas
The country is bigger than the valley and tech isn't the only industry. Tech
startups also don't make up the vast majority of small businesses in America.

~~~
grandalf
True enough, but I'd strongly prefer a more general policy (such as a payroll
tax holiday) that would benefit all businesses.

Anyone under 40 should feel quite foolish paying payroll taxes anyway,
considering that social security will self-destruct long before we get any
benefits.

So in addition to paying payroll taxes, tech startups are helping to subsidize
loans for startups in other industries!

------
veritgo
Obama is also making it easier to invest in small businesses and startups,
according to the whitehouse blog:

"... a series of tax cuts for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage
investments in small businesses. He noted further that in his budget, he
proposes permanently reducing to zero the capital gains tax for investments in
small or startup businesses"

Not sure how much investors care about taxes when they are investing in a
startup, but it seems like this would make funding more available.

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/16/Help-for-small-
busin...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/16/Help-for-small-business-
condemnation-for-AIG-bonuses/)

------
rms
Where do I sign up?

Seriously, how do you get a SBA loan?

~~~
patio11
[http://www.sba.gov/services/financialassistance/loanapplicat...](http://www.sba.gov/services/financialassistance/loanapplication/index.html)

Let me warn you in advance: they're set up to fund laundromats, McDonalds, and
dental practices, NOT websites or software developers. The process of applying
for the loan will consume an intense amount of resources which could be better
spent getting stuff in front of customers.

For most people on HN I'd advise you to invest sweat equity, get ramen
profitable, and just grow via reinvestment of revenues at that point.

~~~
gne1963
patio11-

please source your data on why they are NOT set up to fund developers or
websites.

That is not my experience... and at some point your business will require
capital and an SBA loan is a nice alternative.

~~~
patio11
In my experience it is likely a business with

1) extraordinarily little capital or collateral

2) no or low revenues

3) no physical location

4) little documentation attesting to the nature of the business (leases,
franchise agreements, written quotes for proposed capital purchases to be made
with the loan proceeds, that sort of thing)

5) a founder who does not have a successful business background

6) a founder who does not individually have a very strong credit history (true
of many of the young'uns here, largely as an artifact only recently starting
work)

etc, etc will have a bit of difficulty getting through. I respect that your
experience may be different. Most of mine comes from shepherding startups
through the Japanese analog when I worked at a technology incubator here --
one of our main skills was, ahem, learning how to describe high-tech realities
in terms of words responsive to requirements tailored towards industrial
businesses.

(You don't have "no" capital, you have source code. How many man months in
that? Seven? Great, we'll value that at the $10,000 per month chargeout rate
for an intermediate engineer in this neck of the woods: you have $70,000 worth
of intellectual capital. So we'll fill in $70,000 in this bubble here. How
many suppliers do you have? Zero? Well, OK, you use electricity, right? So
Chubu Power is supplier #1. Do you take business calls? NTT, #2... OK, 12
suppliers.)

------
notehall
This is great news!

