I wrote recently about the The Finance Assistance Network (FAN), that I helped set up (along with Lew Visscher and Phil Votteiro) three weeks ago to offer pro bono financial advice to small businesses affected by COVID-19. So far the network has helped almost 200 companies navigate questions around surviving in the post-Covid work and to access PPP and other federal assistance. Tomorrow (Friday, May 1) at 9:00MT the FAN is hosting a webinar – Extending Your Runway: Small Business Tools to Survive a Cash Flow Crisis. The webinar is hosted by Good Business Colorado and is sponsored by a number of organizations advocating for small businesses including MAPR Agency, The Bell Policy Center, Small Business Majority, and others. The…
Archives / April, 2020
The Week 6 Slump
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about settling in and some of the challenges of accepting what is now our new normal. Covid-19 has completely upended everyone’s life and created a massive amount of uncertainty. But, at the time, I wrote that it felt like things were starting to settle in – that many were getting used to their new routines and accepting, if not embracing, the lack of clarity around the future. Rolling forward to this week and it feels like this has changed a bit – at least temporarily. During a number of conversations this week, I’ve noticed a difference in how people are feeling, and to the acceptance that I think most of us had internalized up…
PPP and Women and Minority-Owned Businesses – We Need To Do More
I’ve published a number of posts over the past few weeks about some of the challenges of the existing PPP loans and in particular, about my concerns that the loans aren’t getting to as many of the smaller businesses that need them. In this CNBC op-ed article, Elizabeth McBride and I pointed out how the face of entrepreneurship in the United States is changing. Specifically, the number of women-owned businesses has increased 31 times between 1972 and 2018 (in 1972, women-owned businesses accounted for just 4.6% of all firms; in 2018 that figure was 40%), according to the Kauffman Foundation. But the aid programs are largely failing to address the needs of these key entrepreneurial communities and the PPP loans…
Extending and Expanding Aid – Some Policy Ideas
I was recently asked to put together some ideas for consideration for the next economic package that congress is currently working through and which I hope will both extend existing programs put in place to dampen the blow of the economic crisis brought on by Covid-19 but also extend that aid to critical areas of the economy that aren’t yet being supported by current programs. I touched on some of the issues in two OpEd pieces I co-authored with Elizabeth Macbride in the last two weeks (here and here in case you missed them). There wasn’t space in those to really flesh out a number of ideas that I think are worth thinking about, and I was only in the…
What Policymakers Don’t Understand About Small Business
Entrepreneurship in the United States has been changing in ways that many people have not yet recognized. I’m working on a much more extensive piece on these changes (and have been for some time – more on that project in a future post) but as the Covid-19 crisis took root, it became clear to me and my writing partner, Elizabeth Macbride, that policy-makers fail to understand the nature of entrepreneurship and small business in America (from the composition of entrepreneurs to the types of businesses they are starting to the rise of the “gig” economy) and that this failure was causing them to miss the mark on programs they were implementing to help. Last week, Elizabeth and I wrote an…
Settling In
As we enter week 5 (yes – I had to go back to my calendar and count) of our Covid-19 self-quarantine I find myself alternating between the comfort of my new routine and the uncertainty of not knowing when this will all be over. And for that matter, what “over” in this context means (How quickly will things return to some sense of pre-quarantine normalcy? Is that even possible at this point? What things from my new quarantine life will I miss? Will we be out and about too soon and have to shelter in home again as the virus spikes back up?). It’s a lot to take in. In many respects I’ve come to at least understand, if not…
SBA PPP Loans Aren’t for Everyone
There’s a healthy debate going on right now at many VC firms about whether venture-backed companies should apply to the SBA’s Payroll Protection Program (The Information had a good article on this yesterday (paywall), and Albert Wenger from Union Square Ventures put up an excellent post on the subject here). This program is designed to help businesses struggling with the Covid-19 crisis retain employees and pay for critical infrastructure (specifically rent, mortgage and utilities). I wrote an OpEd piece for CNBC yesterday with Elizabeth Macbride that outlined a number of ways that the program, as currently implemented, is failing to reach many of the businesses it was intended to support. The program is complicated, being implemented through only a subset…
We’re Not Doing Enough to Help Small Businesses
Elizabeth Macbride and I wrote an OpEd piece that was posted on CNBC this morning addressing what we believe to be significant shortcomings of the CARES Act and the SBA’s Payroll Protection Program (PPP). Specifically how the stimulus is failing to meet the needs of small businesses around America in this time of crisis. This is urgent and needs to be addressed as soon as possible. I’d encourage you to click through to read the full piece, but below I’ve outlined the key recommendations we make at the end of the OpEd: 1. Set up individual loan funds Anticipating that the federal aid would roll out slowly, states, communities and foundations have set up their own loan funds, often with donations,…
Meet your COVID-19 CFO
A lot of companies are struggling to figure out how to respond to the economic crisis that was precipitated by COVID-19. Should they cut staff or should they furlough them (and what’s the difference)? Should they ask people to take a pay cut? How much should they be cutting back on marketing and other expenses? What can they negotiate with their landlord? What are the federal programs that might support their business through this? How can they apply for the new PPP (Payroll Protection Plan) SBA loans? It’s a lot to take in. At Foundry we’ve been having daily briefings, calls and email updates with our portfolio to try to stay on top of it. That’s great for the companies…
Investing in Downturns
TBH, I haven’t been thinking much about new investments at the moment. I’ve been asked many times how I think the Covid-19 crisis will change investor behavior and fundraising for startups. I generally give the kind of answer I think most VCs give and say something about how we all know that down markets are great markets for companies to grow (lots of great companies have been started in downturns), that there’s a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines at the moment and that capital will have to be invested, etc. All true, but I think not entirely well thought through in most cases. For example, I also generally point out that despite most investors saying this, the vast…