Times of Entrepreneurship Stories

More Americans Are Embracing Entrepreneurship

During the pandemic, business starts surged. Now, those new founders will face long-term trends that make it hard to establish a growing business.

Read the Story »

VC Spotlight: LA-Based Slauson & Co

The fund has a lofty mission and big-name investors. It’s looking beyond tech for returns from communities of color.
Read the Story »


Commentary: The Pandemic Slammed Women Entrepreneurs. Hardly Anyone Noticed.

Dr. Carrie Santos, head of the global Entrepreneurs Organization, writes for Times of E about how to support women after the pandemic.
Read the Story »


What You May Have Missed

Why Today’s Small Businesses Can’t Get Bank Loans

The number of U.S. institutions has shrunk from 14,400 to fewer than 5,000.
Read the Story »


VC Spotlight: How Women-Led Chloe Capital Faced Down Doubters

The fund, based in Upstate New York, used SPVs to start and still does an invest-in-women tour to cities around the country.

Read the Story »

25 Million Sparks: Refugee Entrepreneurs Are The Untold Stories

One of the refugee entrepreneurs Elizabeth MacBride wrote about almost a decade ago for CNBC was still in the Za’atri refugee camp in Jordan, as of the writing of this book. Asma is one of three heroes of Andrew Leon Hanna’s book. Read the review here:
Read the Story »

 

News With A Future Spin

The Porcelain Challenge: A TikTok influencer made up a trend (kids snorting ground-up porcelain), for fun. If nothing on social media can be trusted, why do journalists treat the events there as news? It’s all entertainment.

Is One of These the Next Boom? Startups taking on the loneliness epidemic or the pink-collar crisis could make a big difference: More than half of U.S. adults are lonely, about the same level as before the pandemic, according to a report published by the life insurance giant Cigna. Online learning platform, Thinkific, followed up with a survey produced by panel provider, Centiment, The survey of 1,000 U.S. adults found that nearly two-thirds of American belong to one community online, and if they pay for online communities, they spend an average of $128.47 a month.
Meanwhile, here’s a report on how the free market is failing in the caregiving industry. (h/t Atlantic.) It’s from the U.S. Treasury.

Crypto regulations. Forex Suggest released a study of crypto regulations in OECD nations, looking at such elements as: if cryptocurrency capital gains are taxed and whether a license is required to operate a crypto business. It’s your call whether you think crypto regs are good or bad. Kim Kardashian might have an opinion about that. Kim Kardashian might have an opinion. Yes, she run afoul of crypto regulations and agreed to pay a $1.3 million fine to the SEC – interesting because it was also a crackdown on non-disclosure by an Instagram influencer.

Living the dream

 

A Life-Work Hack: Drop Off Social Media. Really. Do It.
Maybe it’s time. It’s simple, and you’ve heard it a million times, but as the porcelain challenge story above shows, most social media really is a waste of your time. In a cross-country trip visiting entrepreneurial ecosystems, Victor Hwang, founder of Kansas City-based Right to Start, reported meeting several people who had told him they’d opted off the platforms. Pretty, soon, it’ll be a trend.

Best Practices: How To Cut Costs on Cybersecurity
If you’re confused about how much you should be spending on cybersecurity in your small (or solo) business, consider this: Investments you make in “architecture” – good password practices, backup or separate hard drives and the like, are the cheapest and most effective. Here’s a respected white paper on the topic.

 

Rathskellar

Buzzworthy: There is a right way to cut a sandwich.

One Fun Place To Go: Times of E founder Elizabeth MacBride is heading to Pittsburgh – a city with new comeback buzz – on Sunday for a reporting trip for a package on secont-tier cities, sponsored by Armory Square Ventures. Here’s one place to check out there, recommended by Innovation Works’ Terri Glueck, vice president of communications and community development. City of Asylum, a restaurant, bookstore and performance space devoted to supporting freedom of expression.

Made in America: The B Corp apparel company Allbirds, which has a big focus on sustainability, also has a manufacturing facility in North Carolina.

This story and others on New Builders Dispatch are made possible by a sponsorship from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private, nonpartisan foundation that provides access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity – regardless of race, gender, or geography. The Kansas City, Mo.-based foundation uses its grantmaking, research, programs, and initiatives to support the start and growth of new businesses, a more prepared workforce, and stronger communities. For more information, visit www.kauffman.org and connect with www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdn and www.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn.

A business journalist for 20 years, am the founder of Times of Entrepreneurship and the co-author of The New Builders.