Small Businesses need $$

Capital Strategies Inc., a small Black-owned Wall Street firm founded in 1994, has made it their No. 1 goal to help dreams become reality for many individuals who are perplexed as to where they should turn for capital. "We realize that often, we are working with people's dreams," said Bentley Whitfield, co-founder of Capital Strategies Inc. "A business is what feeds their families, and it makes them who they are." According to Whitfield, most small and mid-sized businesses that need between $100,000 and $10 million have a very difficult time securing loans for such amounts. "When a loan gets above $100,000, that's when banks want to know everything," said Whitfield. But still, perspective loan applicants find that they are still being denied the necessary funds due to admission of faulty credit, lack of collateral, and/or lack of experience in the desired area of business. This is due to the fact that banks still have a tendency to "cherry-pick," said Whitfield, which means that they approve loans to persons with the strongest qualifications: near-perfect credit, bountiful collateral, and who are well-experienced.

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The Value of Education and Success in Business

"If you intend to go into business for yourself,
the value of an education cannot be
overrated" Simmons says. "I think
everybody that's an entrepreneur is
enhanced when they have an education"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXR43MoSr78

INSIDE THE BUSINESS MIND OF Russell Simmons.Full Text Available By: Williams, Jean A.. Black Collegian, Feb2008, Vol. 38 Issue 2, p22-26, 4p;

Is there an answer... What is the answer?

Despite their increased selfconfidence at start-up, evidence from descriptive data on black-owned new ventures indicates that they have fewer employees and that they grow at a significantly slower rate than comparable white-owned enterprises. Scholars suggested that one explanation for this difference is that black entrepreneurs encountered more external constraints including lack of available financing and lack of customer support (Kollinger and Minniti 2006). The inadequate financial services to the inner city residents, in particular, were identified as a cause of chronic poverty, welfare dependency, and economic stagnation (Light and Pham 1998).

Start-up Motivations and Growth Intentions of Minority Nascent Entrepreneursjsbm_291 174..196 by Linda F. Edelman, Candida G. Brush, Tatiana S. Manolova, and
Patricia G. Greene Firm

How do we Succeed in our Businesses?

Recent data on black and white-owned firms from the Current Population Survey, the American Community Survey, the Economic Census, and the Survey of Business Owners indicate
that there are systematic differences between white and black-owned entrepreneurial
new ventures with respect to growth rate, profitability and number of employees (SBA 2007). For example, the number of black-owned start-ups increased by 45.4 percent (the highest
percent increased compared to other ethnic groups) between 1997 and 2002 (SBA 2007). However, despite the impressive growth in the number of black-owned firms, they own only five percent of all U.S. firms with more than five employees (Fairlie and Robb 2008;Rogers et al. 2001). In addition, blackowned firms have the lowest four-year survival rate (35 percent) compared with a 48 percent average for all firms (Robb 2002).

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=48758714&site=ehost-live
Start-up Motivations and Growth Intentions of
Minority Nascent Entrepreneursjsbm_291 174..196
by Linda F. Edelman, Candida G. Brush, Tatiana S. Manolova, and Patricia G. Greene

A Potential downfall for Black Business

One of the most important determinants of success in business is access to startup capital. That's true for all entrepreneurs, not just true for minority entrepreneurs [Startup capital] was the most important factor for determining why Asians do well in business, and it's the most important factor for why African-American businesses are not doing as well Wealth inequality is transferring into business performance inequality. The groups that seem to have a lot of wealth are able to start better capitalized, faster-growing firms that do well. The ethnic and racial groups that don't have that access to capital because of low wealth — they're struggling.

Race's Role in Startup Success. By: Blacks, John Tozzi, BusinessWeek Online, 9/15/2008

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2008/sb20080912

Networking as a Solution for Blacks

George Fraser in his book Success Runs in our Race

“I believe that African Americans are now quite actively seeking to come together as a people with a unified vision for success… Afro-centric networking is the modern equivalent of the Underground Railroad. Blacks of the integration generation who have persevered and succeeded are increasingly coming to see their blackness not as a liability, but as an asset that provides not only psychological strength but economic power.” (Page 72)

Blacks, Education and Business Success

Commerce and industry are subjects in the educational process that have somehow eluded the black curriculum. There has been an improper evaluation of the cause of the illness resulting in a lack of understanding of the required treatment. The fact is that residents of the ghetto have simply been consumers. They have not been trained to be productive in our society. All of this has resulted in the ghetto’s suffering from what the economist calls a deficit balance of payments.

Leonard Evans Jr. "Ghetto Marketing, What do we do Now?"