Yesterday evening I attended the BizTech Small Business Expo held here in San Francisco. The event was a chance for local entrepreneurs and small business owners to gather, network, and meet representatives from a variety of companies offering solutions to help them grow their businesses, including HR solutions provider TriNet, financial management site Bill.com, and email marketing company VerticalResponse, all useful resources for growing businesses too small to have their own human resources, finance, and marketing departments.
After about an hour of wine-fueled hobnobbing, attendees settled down to listen to a discussion about the latest small business trends. Host Edith Yeung interviewed a four-person panel made up of SBA District Director Mark Quinn, Wells Fargo Sr. VP Maggie Mui, Visa Head of Small Business Guy Philips, and City of San Francisco Executive Director Regina Dick-Endrizzi.
When asked what he felt were the biggest challenges facing small business owners today, the SBA's Quinn said he believed finding great talent was often easy for entrepreneurs but that they struggled with two things: managing and marketing their businesses. Wells Fargo's Mui said it was the limited resources small business owners were struggling with, while Visa's Philips cited rising healthcare costs, attracting and retaining customers, and cash flow. (He did, however, point out that just six months ago the key concerns were cash flow and simply staying in business, according to a recent Small Business Insight survey conducted by the company.) Dick-Endrizzi felt government red tape was on the top of the list, such as the many complicated and time-consuming licenses, fees, permits, and regulations the city of San Francisco requires of small business owners, a comment that got a lot of agitated nods from the audience.
As for their big initiatives for 2011, Quinn spoke about his hope to increase small business lending, thanks, in part, to the large amount of money the SBA has received due to last year's Small Business Jobs Act, signed into law by President Obama. Philips said that Visa would like to make transaction easier and safer, and help enable spending so that small business owners can increase their cash flow.
This first panel was followed by a short presentation by Randy Reddig, co-founder of Square, a company that produces a tiny credit card reader that attaches to your mobile phone, effectively turning anyone with a smartphone into a merchant who can accept credit card payments. The device is pretty cool and looks like it came from the minimalist mind of an Apple designer.
There was a lot of great energy in the room and, true to form, the entrepreneurs in attendance were not shy at all, working their way through the packed space, introducing themselves and pressing their business cards into each other's palms. I'm not much of a networker. I'm not really an entrepreneur either, and last night it was evident how closely those two things are related. If you are in business for yourself, it's absolutely crucial that you get out there and network your butt off whenever and wherever you can. So much of business is built upon relationships, and if you want to succeed, you simply cannot afford to be shy. Nor can you afford to work in a vacuum, cut off from the creative ideas and personal connections that help you find your footing as a new entrepreneur.
The event was held in an interesting venue: RocketSpace, a shared, open plan office space focused on rapid growth tech and new media companies. The space currently houses over 150 people from over 35 companies, including Zappos.com. The space is exactly what you fantasize when you think about "hip, high tech San Francisco startup" -- a raw warehouse-type space with exposed brick, glass-walled meeting rooms, and young entrepreneurs typing away on their shiny MacBooks or chatting on their iPhones while random dogs wander around the office. RocketSpace often holds networking events for its members and other tech startup entrepreneurs. If you're in the Bay Area, check out the RocketSpace calendar to see if there's an event you might like to attend.
