Kyle
We knew that the Startup America partnership was getting really close to it’s 10,000th member. We’ve been tracking that progress since the beginning and when the member counter hit 9700 last week we knew they were close.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, or are brand new to nibletz.com “the voice of startups everywhere else”, Startup America is an organization spearheaded by the Case Foundation and blessed with a billion dollars in funding from the federal government under the Obama administration.
Startup America has multiple benefits for entrepreneurs and startups. It’s free to join, and at the last count there were over 93 benefits to members, ranging from a pretty snazzy mileage perk on American Airlines, to substantial savings on Dell computers and a libraries worth of free e-books. All of the “perks” are related to starting a startup or resources a startup would need as they grow.
Startup America is very inline with the mission here at nibletz.com. In fact, Scott Case, the CEO of Startup America (and no relation to Steve Case), will be speaking at the upcoming “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference”.
As for their 10,000th member EasyWeb Content, they come from neighboring StartupMD. Founder Payman Taei explained to Startup America in a blog post, that they were running a web design business. What they found was that there were a lot of companies that wanted to get online but didn’t have the budget to do so.
There are a bunch of “DIY” website builders, for instance GoDaddy has a product called “Website Tonight” that allows users to create websites in minutes. But remember, at the core GoDaddy is a domain name registrant, and not a design firm.
With EasyWebContent’s background in design, they’ve built a tool that gives small business owners the ability to build their own, sharply designed websites and content.
Check out the video below with Taei who talks about Maryland and Startup America. Links below:
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“Startup America” is not for startups. And it is definitely not for small business.
The SBA set aside $2 billion for Startup America and NONE of it is available to the 600,000 annual startups that want to be small businesses. It goes directly to venture capital firms like Case’s, focused on a tiny percentage of existing larger companies started as early as 2001 (NOT startups).
Scott Case admits these freakishly few startups have no intention of being one of the 28 million small businesses in America. His words: “If you ask which of them are small businesses, no one will raise their hand. What they’ll tell you is that they are giant businesses that just haven’t scaled yet.” http://wapo.st/tgmcXl
Case further denigrates small business, saying, “Small business owners, if they fail at their first attempt, they’ll immediately go take a job in their industry.”
Startup America greases the skids with $2 billion for giants-in-the-making, then disparages small business owners saying they have no stomach for the game, will fold like a cheap suit and beg for a job the first time things don’t work out.
If ever there was a “superior-race” business mentality openly proposed by giant business and giant government, Startup America is it. It is an elitist club for the freakish few pre-giants to help them do an end-run on the free market system.
Just watch where the money goes. 100% to venture capitalists who will fund “giant businesses that just haven’t scaled yet” who are already as old as 12 years (by Startup America’s definition of “startup”).