Introduction
Getting the money to fund a business used to be easier.
Back in the day, options abounded. Banks had ready capital to lend, and if you did not qualify, Small Business Administration (SBA)-backed loans were available. If they didn't suit your needs, then you might have considered a home equity loan; with housing prices rising at near a 10 percent annual clip, entrepreneurs often tapped the home equity ATM. Low-doc or no-doc home equity loans were common, as were loans of 125 percent of the value of your residence. If you needed bigger bucks, venture capitalists and angel investors were more than happy to get you some cash in exchange for a piece of the pie.
Those days, as we all know too well, are long gone. The housing bubble burst. The mortgage crisis hit. The stock market tumbled. Capital markets dried up.
As a result, today, while many of those funding options are still around, terms and conditions, as they say, apply. There is less money and it is harder to get. But “harder” is not the same as “impossible.” If having less money available is the bad news, the good news is that not only is it still available, but a crop of new, creative options have also emerged. You just have to know where to look.
This book is the right place to start.
As the senior business columnist for USATODAY.com, author of The Small Business Bible, and a popular speaker on the business lecture circuit, I get to meet a lot of entrepreneurs. What I know is that money is still out there; it's ...
