Reducing barriers | SBA's Karen Mills leads a listening tour in support of entrepreneurship
I was invited last week to Boston to participate in the Startup America Partnership’s Reducing Barriers roundtable led by Karen Mills, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration. As I pointed out in my Feb. 21 column, “The State of Innovation,” the Obama administration has joined with the Case Foundation and the Kauffman Foundation to launch its Startup America Partnership, an initiative designed to put a spotlight on entrepreneurship and innovation at the small business level. For its part, SBA has organized an eight-city “listening” tour designed to convene players in the entrepreneurship ecosystem to learn what barriers — capital, regulatory, support, etc. — are getting in the way of the job- and innovation-creating power that small businesses are known to deliver.
Mills brought to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Faculty Club in Cambridge a high-powered assemblage that included, among others: Department of Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, Economic Development Administration Assistant Secretary for Commerce and Administration John Fernandez, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administrator Cass Sunstein, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. The format of the three-hour session included an hour or more of panel discussion, facilitated by Mills, in which each agency head discussed what they were doing to reduce barriers to entrepreneurship.
Chu announced a new program designed to reduce the cost to license new technologies from national labs. Fernandez referenced his efforts in implementing the Regional Innovation Clusters programs that he credited Mills for helping catalyze across multiple federal agencies. FDA’s Hamburg discussed her efforts to speed the FDA’s approval process without compromising safety. And Cass Sunstein made remarks on his role to reduce the regulatory burden of federal agencies.
A seat at the table
Following the panel session and a break, Mills and others broke into small group meetings in which attendees got a chance to speak directly to agency officials (for some 90 minutes!) about barriers to growth. I was fortunate to be in a room with some 20 others facilitated by Mills and Sunstein and got to hear various stakeholders — entrepreneurs, state agencies (including the Maine Technology Institute) — reflect on what the government could do better.
For my part, I got a question about the capital gap that exists in low- and moderate-income communities for companies that are not high-growth venture capital candidates (good but not great growth prospects) but are also not large enough to support later-stage mezzanine capital or other forms of debt. Mills concurred that this gap — beyond the other gap referenced in the Dec. 13, 2010 Mainebiz cover story, “Capital pains” — was one the SBA and other agencies are looking at. (I will interview Karen Mills this month on an array of topics, including this one, and will publish a version of the interview in Mainebiz, likely in late spring).
I ran into a number of Maine folks in the room, including: Betsy Biemann, director of Maine Technology Institute (Gardiner); Kerem Durag, CEO of Biovation (Boothbay Harbor); Karin Gregory of law firm Furman Gregory Deptula (Bedford); and Marilyn Lapidus of Echoheart (Damariscotta). During the session, Mills gave a shout-out to Betsy Biemann in relation to MTI’s cluster work and, more generally, to all those who trekked in from Maine to participate.
The announcement of Startup America Partnership as a public-private initiative felt very much like a high-profile PR campaign. Led by two entrepreneurship-oriented foundations, it has strong and evident support from multiple federal agencies, in support of the Obama administration’s clear and unequivocal support of small businesses. Most of the SAP announcements delivered little in the way of incremental new funding, whether from public or private sources. That said, Mills’ announced intent to create two $1 billion venture capital pools certainly will be a significant event, provided it gets authorized and instantiated into the 2012 budget.
With SAP’s focus on small business, SBA has been central to the public sector piece of the public-private partnership. With her background in venture capital, Mills has always been well attuned to the issues and needs of small businesses, whether those of the Main Street variety or the “gazelles,” high-growth ventures powered by venture capital. The Reducing Barriers road show had Mills at the center, as convener and facilitator. The event and engagement appear to reflect a genuine effort to listen to entrepreneurs struggling in a down economy, with limited capital and challenged by the burden of often unnecessary and/or excessive federal regulations and reporting. SBA’s ability to bring the key agency leads to each of these venues is a testament to Mills’ influence and to this administration’s clear commitment to small business. Given its proven job- and innovation-creating capacity, it’s no wonder.
Michael Gurau, president of Clear Innovation Partners, a Maine-based cluster development organization, can be reached at mgurau@clearinnovationpartners.com. Read more Venture Builder here.
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