New Report: 28% of Marylanders Have Started a Small Business, Majority Have Participated in Start-Ups

Where is the bailout for small business owners?

Last Friday, the Greater Baltimore Technology Council and Maryland's Department of Business & Economic Development released statewide survey results indicating that a whopping 28% of all Marylanders have "founded or partnered" in a business.

According to DBED: "The report, On Entrepreneurism: A Statewide Survey of Business Owners explores the business start-up by industry and examines the role government and advocacy groups can play to support entrepreneurs. Key findings indicate that 56% of Marylanders have personal experience with business start-ups as a creator, participant or supporter and 47% have been directly involved in a business start-up as a creator or participant. Complete results."

COUNTERPOINT: Maryland IS Launching New Programs to Encourage Startups and Innovation

Lately, Maryland Juice has been throwing the evil eye at the use of corporate welfare dollars in ways that don't seem to create new jobs or economic activity. To be clear, we are not anti-business, but we are anti-waste and very pro-efficiency. This is a recession, after all. That's why we've suggested a number of alternative ways to spend that kind of money, including by focusing on sectors that are more likely to lead to immediate new jobs and spending (ie: small or local businesses & startups). The point is simple: we should at least consider using the money for more productive things than paying off companies that are threatening to move. When a company makes that threat, their game plan is often already decided. You can't negotiate when faced with economic extortion.

We recently posted a series of articles on these topics, most recently highlighting an alternative energy company that moved from Montgomery County to Howard. The piece (which included a list of things governments can do to encourage startups) elicited responses from a couple elected officials, including this public comment from Del. Eric Luedtke (D14 Democrat):

DBED Head: Christian Johansson

Reading all the discussion on economic development with interest, but it's worth noting that the state is already doing a number of things on Tim's list of suggestions. For example, the Department of Business and Economic Development proposed (and the Assembly passed) the Invest Maryland Initiative this past spring. It totals $70 million of investment funds which are intended to largely focus on the angel stage of investment, and the majority of which will be privately managed by an experienced investment firm. Invest is intended to be an evergreen fund, so that capital and potentially some portion of profits returned from successful start-ups will be reinvested in other start-ups. The Secretary at DBED - Christian Johansson - is very focused on creating a better environment for entrepreneurship in the state, and Invest was his big push this past session: