The Post before the Money Post

My planned how-to-finance-your-new-business post has been hard to write. My first attempt ran into so much negative data on the state of small business financing that how-to became op-ed. My opinion? Small businesses can’t access capital and deserve much more help than the meager 0.3% of the stimulus they received.

The news since has been no better. So if you are bitter from the irony of Wall Street bonuses and small business money woes simultaneously growing to record levels, then maybe you can laugh at the black humor of Kiva.org, the microlender known for funding entrepreneurs in developing countries, loaning money to U.S. small businesses.

Fortunately, troubles in the small business sector seem to be getting greater attention. I hope soon there are positive developments to highlight. The start-up financing post drops this weekend, but the troubled credit markets make it more hypothetical and vague than your usual lawyer blog post. When things settle down, I hope most of what I say is still true; otherwise I will be looking for a new career as human-owned businesses will be an endangered species.

To give you some concrete help, I updated my previous listing of funding resources to include, along with the non-profits, some of the for-profits that might not be as readily apparent as commercial banks.