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Internet Life professional small office/home office

Starting and Operating a Small Business

  BY KEN SADLER   

From securing venture capital to renting equipment and learning the laws that govern your enterprise, the Web's offerings for the entrepreneur are wide-ranging and useful.



At last, a really new idea! KidsVenture: How to Start Your Own Business features a 27-minute video showing how three bored but enterprising teenagers started their own business one summer. The video costs $29.95, but it comes with a booklet featuring 100 year-round money-making projects for venturesome teens. The design is bright and open with graphics and photos interspersed with short paragraphs of text that tell you all you need to know. This is one to go for.


The U.S. Small Business Administration has created an exceedingly well-designed site that outlines how the SBA can help small business and entrepreneurs. This is a text-heavy site, but the use of large type in an open, easy-to-read structure will ease your eye muscles. The colorful cover page, using a mixture of straight links and icons, leads you to all the important places on the site.

Money Hunter wants your business idea to be fruitful. Run by Capital Express LLC, a venture capital firm, this site will set you off and running in the right direction. First you'll see loads of advice about mission statements (and why you need one), lawyers, patents and trademarks, hiring salespeople, and dealing with national chain operations. But the real gem here is almost obscured by all this advice: Dig around and you'll find a business plan template you can use to organize and outline your dream, then submit it to these folks for a viability analysis.



ConnectNet is the colorful and well-planned electronic publication of Program Connect, the program in technology and entrepreneurship at the University of California, San Diego. You'll see much information for high-tech and biotech entrepreneurs, including doing business abroad and environmental concerns, and it's relatively easy to get. Solid information, well presented.


LifeWorks offers business loans, inventory funding, working capital, expansion capital, and risk capital. Also, since it specializes in commercial property foreclosures and bankruptcies, Lifeworks can arrange financing for a wide variety of properties.

If you want to lease furniture, fixtures, or equipment for a start-up business rather than buy them, you'd best spend some time at FSFG Leasing Corp. This federally funded equipment-funding plan offers plenty of information, including the advantages of leasing, and an e-mail address to get more.

Are you looking for help in financing your great idea or additional capital to expand your small business? Venture One brings the entrepreneur and venture capitalist together and helps them communicate with one another. The cover page is undistinguished, but short and to the point. The links lead to important information, such as the economics of venture capital and which businesses find funding.



You'll find good information on franchising in particular and business opportunities in general at the Entrepreneur's Law Center. Some of the legal points are a bit esoteric, but if you're looking for the laws covering business start-ups and entrepreneurship, you'll probably find them here. The site design is nothing to write home about, but it's valuable.

Part of Internetwork (UK)'s Classified Business Directory, The Entrepreneur's Emporium features ads for entrepreneurial magazines published worldwide. The ads are short and easy to read, despite the use of blinking text. The design is open and attractive for an all-text site.

Canadian Entrepreneur is a newsletter by and for aspiring young entrepreneurs. You'll see a sample article and subscription information. Well-done and colorful.

"Are you sure your job will exist in 5 years?" is the arresting headline for Home Business Gameplan. What follows is a series of questions aimed at getting you to consider becoming your own boss. Interspersed with these questions are links that take you to pages dealing with franchises, marketing, contracts, and other aspects of running a small business. All this leads to the offering of two different packages of information that can be downloaded for a price. The design is aggressive and grabs your attention at once. The coding for the links was annoying, though: They become hard to see once you've clicked on them.

The Enterprise Corporation of Pittsburgh is a non-profit organization affiliated with Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh that's dedicated to assisting entrepreneurs in southwestern Pennsylvania develop "significant new businesses" at no charge. This site that covers a lot of ground in a small space. The list of financial supporters is impressive. Also dedicated to helping Pennsylvania businesses is the Market Research Services Center, a marketing, financial, and management consulting firm with a text-heavy though easily navigable site. Pennsylvania's small businesses would do well to take the time to read these sites carefully to see if they can use the kind of valuable help being offered.
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When we looked in, a new column called The Advisor at Small Business Advisor covered how to obtain a merchant card account wisely. The site also sells two books: The Small Business Start-Up Guide and Making the United States Government Your Customer. These books don't promise quick riches, but they provide down-to-earth statements about the problems inherent in starting small businesses. The site design is not particularly inspiring, but there's some good stuff here.

Are you ready for Government Giveaways for Entrepreneurs ? The product for sale here is a CD-ROM with "over 12,000 sources of money, help, and information to start or expand your business."

Surprise! The Entrepreneur Mailing List Co. sells mailing lists. Unfortunately, you have to cut and paste the e-mail addresses into a message for more information. All in all, an insipid site.

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QUICK CLICK!
KidsVenture: How to Start Your Own Business

U.S. Small Business Administration

Money Hunter

ConnectNet

LifeWorks

FSFG Leasing Corp.

Venture One

Entrepreneur's Law Center

The Entrepreneur's Emporium

Canadian Entrepreneur

Home Business Gameplan

The Enterprise Corporation of Pittsburgh

Market Research Services Center

Small Business Advisor

Government Giveaways for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneur Mailing List Co.