Before SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet takes the stage Monday to help open eMerge Americas as the first keynote speaker, she spent some time with startups in Miami on Sunday.
Contreras-Sweet spoke to many of the 125 startups that will be participating in the eMerge Americas Startup Showcase because they were part in a daylong bootcamp at Venture Hive in downtown Miami.
Choosing Miami to kick off National Small Business Week, Contreras-Sweet peppered her comments with statistics about the importance of entrepreneurship to the national economy. The SBA is an indirect lender to small businesses as Uncle Sam guarantees SBA loans. But it also offers a network of complimentary counseling services from SCORE, Florida Small Business Development Centers and other agencies and it has a number of new programs for small businesses and startups.
In the U.S., two of three net new jobs are created by small businesses, she said. "It's the small that should be made a big deal ... Small businesses are changing the world." And failing is part of the journey: Henry Ford and Walt Disney filed for bankruptcy, they failed and failed before wildly succeeding, she reminded the crowd.
Coming from Mexico at the age of 5, Contreras-Sweet said she experienced the personal power of entrepreneurship, and later started a bank. "My grandmother once said if I worked hard I could work in an office and be a secretary. Little did she know that I would hold office and be a Cabinet secretary."
She said the best advice came from her mom when she was in elementary school: "Don't brag about the titles that you have, it is what you do with the titles you have."
"Together I want us to be a team, to lift our country, our communities and our families," she said. "We're here not to be greedy but to do good, to make sure we have a social impact on society."
Among the new and existing programs:
Knowing that paperwork can be complicated, SBA established the LINC (with a C for capital) program. You are asked 20 questions and within 48 hours are matched with SBA lenders that want your business. "It puts the borrower in the driver seat." It also levels the playing field, because small lenders often have very good programs but don't have the brand power to get them out there, she said.
SBA is one of the first government departments in the federal government to have a fully bilingual website, all 2,000 pages, which just went live.
SBA has entered into a partnership with AARP, Score and other centers, to offer an entire program that directs encore entrepreneurs to its small dollar loans. "We have an export loan product that is 90 percent guaranteed."
There is an angel seed funding program called SBIR that matches inventors and innovators with grants from partnering investor companies, she said.
In order to support new startup accelerators and incubators for local communities, SBA also launched a national growth accelerator grant competition last year, and Venture Hive was a winner. "These are fresh places ... to help you start, prepare, grow or scale your business."
The startup bootcamp at Venture Hive also included three workshops and small group mentoring sessions. Susan Amat, Venture Hive founder, said "Get to know each other, this is about finding synergies and cooperation and leveraging all the talent in this room. eMerge is really about networking and leveraging connections long after the conference is over."
- Nancy Dahlberg