Small Business Owners Endorse Piece Of Obama's Jobs Act

By Adrianna McGinley

The House Subcommittee on TARP, Financial Services, and Bailouts of Public and Private Programs questioned a small group of entrepreneurs on the financial burdens they are faced with and gathered their opinions on four pieces of legislation scheduled to be voted on in the House this week.

The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act is one of the pieces that make up President Obama’s unified American Jobs Act. The legislation focuses on “crowd funding”, which allows small businesses to use the internet and social media to collect capital.

Subcommittee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said securities reform is long overdue, saying that the Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Act of the ’30s “have not been substantially updated since a gallon of gasoline cost 10 cents.”

“The ramifications of not modernizing our securities regulations have lead to registration and reporting requirements so onerous and costly that small companies have great difficulty raising capital,” McHenry said.

Eric Koester, CMO and Co-founder of Zaarly, an online marketplace for local buyers and sellers, said it is cheaper today to start a business than ever before, but entrepreneurs still struggle to gain access to capital. Koester said that Zaarly hired 30 new employees this year and “if I had the opportunity to hire ten more qualified engineers, I certainly would.”

“Our goal is to grow into those large mature businesses that can create thousands and thousands of jobs, so I think across the board any provisions that allow an increase of access to capital, an increased ability to attract and retain employees, and an ability to basically grow our business free of restrictions and limitations are helpful,” Koester said.

Koester asknowledged that immigration reform is also a necessary step to small business success, prompting Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) to announce her commitment to introduce legislation facilitating the visa process for foreign entrepreneurs.

“Improvements to immigration will be an important thing for us to be able to attract talent from around the world,” Koester said. “That’s one of the things that the United States has an incredible advantage at doing.”

Lonna Williams, CEO of Ridge Diagnostics, and Dr. Tsvi Goldenberg, CEO of eemRa, also testified before the committee, representing small businesses in the medical field.

Williams said a slow United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)has become another obstacle for entrepreneurs to overcome, saying a two and half year delay for first action from the USPTO prevented her business from publishing studies and technological findings that could have seriously impacted the medical field.

Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) emphasized the importance for the U.S. to facilitate capital access for small business in order to create jobs, especially in the medical field.

“There is a lot here that is shrinking in terms of access,” Guinta said. “Some of that is actually going overseas and those companies are being created overseas, and those jobs are being created overseas, and in [the medical field]…these are high paying, high quality jobs that we could be creating right here in America if the access to capital issue was addressed.”