Category Archives: Articles

The Loan Fund Helps Veteran Buy Building To Expand Business

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Joe Justice, Loan Officer, The Loan Fund

By Joe Justice, Loan Officer, The Loan Fund

Jose Ocampo launched his Santa Fe Exclusive Honda and Acura auto repair and parts business 13 years ago in a small building in the New Mexico capital. He outgrew the space within three years and moved to a larger facility nearby.

As his business continued to grow, Ocampo started looking around for “a building with better parking and more room” that would be better to meet his customers’ needs and comfort.

About a year ago he found an ideal spot on Siler Lane with a metal building with 2,000 square feet of warehouse space. The lot was particularly attractive because it could accommodate construction of a 2,000-square-foot workspace addition. Continue reading →

Basic Financial Literacy Essential for Business Owners

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Carmen Martinez, director, Small Business Development Center at San Juan College

By Carmen Martinez, director, Small Business Development Center at San Juan College

Business owners don’t need a degree in accounting, but they do need to know how to read basic financial statements and when to ask the accountants who prepare them to explain what they don’t understand.

No one wants to be like the business owner who believed she was making a profit because her checkbook had a positive balance. But even business owners who diligently record financial transactions using basic accounting software don’t always comprehend the reports their CPA generates based on these records.

That means they’re not using the expertise they pay for, and they’re not using the numbers as tools to build their business.

The three financial reports every business owner should understand are the profit and loss statement, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement. Continue reading →

Innovators Learn the Benefits, Challenges of Crowdfunding

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By Lisa Adkins, Director of the BioScienceCenter

By Lisa Adkins, Director of the BioScience Center

“Crowdfunding” is a way that startups can raise money to get a project or enterprise off the ground without company founders having to surrender ownership, secure a loan or approach foundations for elusive grants.

Earlier incarnations of the practice didn’t have the advantage of instant access to a global fan base that can grow exponentially through social media. The Internet created that access, and crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter.com and IndieGoGo.com created platforms where people could pitch their projects.

Aqua Research, a resident company in the BioScienceCenter incubator in Albuquerque, is using IndieGoGo to raise $50,000 by May 10 to finance production of its H2gO water purifier, which can turn up to five gallons of unsafe water at a time into potable water using a solar-powered rechargeable cell-phone battery. Continue reading →

Farmington Company Well-Schooled in Lean Manufacturing Techniques

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Denise Williams, innovation director, New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership

By Denise Williams, Innovation Director, New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership

Henry Production Inc. of Farmington puts a premium on training. The 51-year-old company is a one-stop oilfield service company, selling and maintaining compressors and pumps used in the oil and natural gas industry, servicing and overhauling engines and fabricating skids and piping, among other things.

Because machine technology is always changing, the company sponsors a 16-week class once a year to ensure its newer technicians understand the mechanical systems they’re working with. Even seasoned techs take refresher courses to stay on top of technological advances.

Continue reading →

Know the Landscape Before Requesting a Small Business Loan

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Jordan van Rijn, NM Loan Officer, Accion New Mexico ∙ Arizona ∙ Colorado

Jordan van Rijn

Many Americans long to see where their talents as inventors or craftsmen or cooks can take them. But businesses often struggle in their early years, and this makes some lenders wary of financing enterprises that don’t have an established track record. After repeated rejections from potential funders, many entrepreneurs simply give up.

Organizations like DreamSpring are one option for the aspiring entrepreneur who can’t secure a loan through a more traditional financial institution, such as a bank or credit union. But getting a loan requires some groundwork, no matter where she looks.

Continue reading →

Startup Weekends Set Ideas in Motion

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Eric Renz-Whitmore

Eric Renz-Whitmore, Founding Executive Director, New Mexico Tech Council

Developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts gathered March 1-3 in Santa Fe for a marathon of brainstorming, team building and product testing aimed at transforming entrepreneurial impulses into viable ventures.

More than 60 people showed up for the inaugural Startup Weekend Santa Fe, a 48-hour intensive, immersive collaboration known to the tech world as a hackathon. Participants pitched 32 ideas for marketable products or services, formed 16 teams around the most feasible ideas and ended the weekend with 10 groups presenting projects to judges.

A proposal to develop a broadcast platform for amateur sporting events — dubbed SportXast by its Santa Fe and Los Alamos team members — emerged the winner. Continue reading →

Grants Support Rural Business Development

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Terry Brunner

Terry Brunner, State Director, USDA Rural Development Agency

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development agency is encouraging nonprofit organizations in rural communities to apply for a Rural Business Enterprise Grant to help them finance projects designed to develop small and emerging private businesses. State and local governments, Indian tribes, nonprofits and public and private nonprofit higher education institutions in communities with 50,000 or fewer residents are eligible to apply.

During the last fiscal year, the program provided $283,000 to six New Mexico recipients. It helped the Southwest Regional Housing and Community Development Corporation establish a revolving loan fund to benefit micro businesses in four New Mexico counties. And it awarded $50,000 to the Ramah Navajo School Board Inc. to pay for a preliminary architectural feasibility report and schematic design for CedarBluffTravelCenter and the Cedar Bluff Restaurant and Business Complex in Ramah, New Mexico. Continue reading →

Seek Venture Capital When the Market is Hot

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Tom Stephenson

Tom Stephenson, Managing General Partner, Verge Fund

Raising equity capital for a business venture never happens in a vacuum. External forces inevitably affect when and how and where investors are found, just as they affect decisions about how much money is needed to support the company for a few years until it starts showing a profit.

External forces include the financing market — the universe of people and institutions that constitute funding sources for a company — as well as the larger business market in which it operates. Understanding these forces can help an entrepreneur develop a fundraising strategy.

Pure financial investors are in the game to make the most money they can from their investment in a company. But even they can make mistakes and act impulsively. Continue reading →

Meaningful Gestures: Corrales Company Puts VAF Grant to Work

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Belinda Snyder

Belinda Snyder, Program Manager, LANL Technology Transfer Division

Ideum, a Corrales-based company founded in 1999, needed help updating its successful gesture-based software and preparing it for international release. In 2011, it was awarded one of three $100,000 grants that Los Alamos National Security gives tech-based innovators every year through its Venture Acceleration Fund to develop commercial uses for innovative technology and get them to market as quickly as possible.

Ideum first released GestureWorks in the summer of 2009 as a free, unfinished (or “alpha”) version of its software, which analyzes and simulates human gestures for the kinds of touch-activated tables that are increasingly used in interactive educational exhibits. Later that year, Ideum issued an improved version as a commercial product that educators could use to design compelling “touch-table” demonstrations of scientific concepts. Continue reading →

Natural Selection: Evolution is Essential to Business Survival

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Renata Golden

Renata Golden, CEO, Golden Ink, Inc.

Businesses, like people, need to grow to stay relevant — even if the owner wonders where she’ll find the hours to devote to something that already consumes every hour she’s not sleeping.

Golden Ink reached that pivotal moment in 2012, when I had to decide whether to build it or to prune and risk killing it.  The 100-hour workweeks had become unsustainable, but I was loath to stifle the natural expansion of a business I’d worked so hard to build and hoped one day to sell.

Continue reading →