November 24, 2009 – Business Week – New York, NY, US
Goldman Sachs (GS) announced last week that it is teaming up with Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) CEO Warren Buffett to launch 10,000 Small Businesses, a $500 million initiative aimed at assisting low-income entrepreneurs.
Goldman is hardly alone in investing in small business. There are thousands of organizations—private, public, nonprofit, and hybrid—whose primary mission is to mentor, train, educate, and fund entrepreneurs.
One group reaching out to struggling entrepreneurs in distressed communities is Rising Tide Capital. The Jersey City (N.J.)-based nonprofit, founded by Alfa Demmellash and Alex Forrester when they were classmates at Harvard University, offers one-on-one business coaching and a 10-week entrepreneurship course called the Community Business Academy.
Since it was founded in 2004, Rising Tide has worked with more than 250 individuals, mostly single mothers, in Jersey City. “We noticed that there was a gap in the services provided, particularly to low-income entrepreneurs living in distressed inner cities. A lot of the established groups, such as SCORE and the U.S.Small Business Development Centers, focus on entrepreneurs further along in their journey,” Demmellash says.
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