Startup America shares how local empowerment for small business and entrepreneurs is successful.
Startup America got its roots when, in January 2011, President Obama called on both the federal government and the private sector to dramatically increase the prevalence and success of entrepreneurs across the country. Over the past year, the Obama Administration rolled out a set of entrepreneur-focused policy initiatives in five areas:
- Unlocking access to capital to fuel startup growth
- Connecting mentors and education to entrepreneurs
- Reducing barriers and making government work for entrepreneurs
- Accelerating innovation from “lab to market” for breakthrough technologies
- Unleashing market opportunities in industries like healthcare, clean energy, and education
In response to Startup America, leaders in the private sector launched an independent alliance of entrepreneurs, corporations, universities, foundations, and other leaders. They have joined together to fuel innovative, high-growth U.S. startups. Within the first year, the Partnership has mobilized to make over $1 billion in business services that are available to a national network serving as many as 100,000 startups over the next three years.
Gideon Rubin, an impressive, successful entrepreneur and businessman, is helping found Startup Santa Barbara as a regional, local connection to the regional and national network of resources and contacts for entrepreneurs, including Startup California. As Gideon shares, businesses today must focus on addressing their market and product or service development to be successful instead of spending months building structure and business processes.
Instead of “recreating the wheel” each time, a new business now has the opportunity to utilize specialists in the areas of HR, accounting, web development and much more, and through Startup America, often at a discount. Mentors, advisors and services are part of the Startup America network. Gideon also plans to work with integrating the resources and needs of large corporations with start-ups for mutual benefit.
In addition, Gideon shares his thoughts on angel investing in response to start-ups and speaks some about crowdfunding for debt and for equity. Crowd funding is an area that has great promise for startups, but “investors” using it in these early stages of crowdfunding should be beware and assure that due diligence is done prior to making any investment.
Gideon Rubin is the Chief Marketing Officer for Local Market Launch, LLC. This company serves local business to assure local optimization of their web presence.
Other interviews you may enjoy include:
Marsha Bailey and Women’s Economic Ventures
Jerry Knotts and the Clean Business Summit (coming again soon in August 2012)
