Last week, Jason Grill and Victor Hwang visited Nebraska to discuss their new company and effort to help young companies, Right to Start. The company is a startup “trade association”- like entity that is intended to help build an understanding of how virtually every government program and funding has an effect (often ignorance or negative-ness) for young companies.
Basically, according to the founders, almost every government program has some impact on entrepreneurs and young companies. For example, a discussion about education affects the supply of workers and new entrepreneurs.
To be clear, this is not about high growth entrepreneurship exclusively – but about startups and young companies. Many in the ecosystem building world do not realize, according to Grill and Hwang, that both high growth and main street businesses are the cause of almost all net new job growth – but its YOUNG (under 5 years old) businesses – not just the type of businesses.
Grill and Hwang met with a variety of stakeholders and policymakers. In these conversations, common themes included:
- The need to improve data around age of companies (and other demographics) with which government contracts – leading to an allocation of 5% of government contracts to young companies.
- A decrease in taxation and a simplification of taxes for early companies.
- An elimination of onerous policies that prevent entrepreneurs from starting – such as an elimination of non-compete contracts and healthcare portability.
- A reduction in the number, type, and expense associated with occupational licenses.
- Greater access to capital – including debt, grants, and novel instruments (such as revenue or royalty based capital) – not just venture capital.
- And, simplification of government access points – creating one-stop shops for entrepreneurs at city hall or with state government.
In short, the goal of the visit and their company is to transform government to be more entrepreneurial friendly and to create simpler, easier to access programs for entrepreneurs.
The goal of this visit to Nebraska was to begin the process of passing state legislation – but beyond the specific goal, there is the more general goal of spreading the word about how government can be improved to help entrepreneurs, rather than penalize them for their efforts.
Right to Start > Digital Leave Behind (ref. 2113) (squarespace.com) – insert this as a graphic with a link.
