Author Archives: Admin

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, NM Loan Officer, Accion New Mexico ∙ Arizona ∙ Colorado

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 Accion 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.

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Chattel

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Movable property often accepted as loan collateral. Chattel includes autos, boats, jewelry and domestic animals. Chattel does not include immovable property such as real estate or intangibles such as securities.

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 →

Microloans

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The extension of very small loans to borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history. It is designed not only to support entrepreneurship, but also in many cases to empower women and uplift entire communities by extension.