Posts By / seth levine

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…