Entrepreneurial

– Cynthia Hsu is a contributor to FindLaw’s Free Enterprise blog. FindLaw is a Thomson Reuters publication. –

Small business owners that are struggling to make ends meet sometimes need business loans – or a pawn shop. Pawn shop loans are now something that some business owners are turning to as a result of the tight economy and lack of lending.

Pawning is probably easier than getting a bank loan, though the interest rates may be significantly higher.

Pawn shops, including online pawn shop Pawngo.com, will evaluate your item, and e-mail you an offer about how much they are willing to loan you. If you are able to repay the loan, you will get your item back. If not, the pawn shop will keep it. Pawngo itself has loaned about $1.35 million in about 46 states, according to the company website.

Pawn shop owners say that the number one reason why small business owners tend to go into their office is because they want to have enough cash flow to pay their employees, reports CNN Money.

– Tim Berry is the president and founder of Palo Alto Software. This post originally appeared on his blog, “Planning, Startups, Stories”. The views expressed are his own. –

Sure, maybe you need the money. Maybe that’s what your business plan says. But seriously: Do you really want to have investors involved in your dream startup?

I’ve said it before: bootstrapping is underrated. I get frequent emails from people asking how they can get investment for their new startup, and I’ve admitted to being a member of an angel investor group. But let’s not forget, while we’re thinking about it, these 10 good reasons not to seek investors for your startup.

– Cynthia Hsu is a contributor to FindLaw’s Free Enterprise blog. FindLaw is a Thomson Reuters publication. –

Employee vacation policies can vary depending on your business. Some employers choose to have no vacation time during a year, while other employers are now instituting forced vacations for employees.

At the Motley Fool, a 250-employee financial services company located in Virginia, all employees are entered into a monthly drawing where one lucky (or unlucky, depending your perspective) employee “wins” a forced two-week vacation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

One way to counter the effects of the recession is to start a retail brand. That’s what entrepreneur Karen Trilevsky did.

The founder and CEO of FullBloom Baking Co, a 22-year-old natural foods bakery outside San Francisco, started rolling out her own line of branded snacks in 2008, after years serving as the behind-the-scenes regional baker for big customers like Whole Foods.

Trilevsky, 54, admited it’s been tough to create a market for new products in the crowded natural and organic foods space, which commands premium pricing –- sometimes as much as 50 percent –- over conventional grocery items. With all the belt tightening, she said customers are often reluctant to try new things.

– Stephanie Rabiner is a contributor to FindLaw’s Free Enterprise blog. FindLaw is a Thomson Reuters publication. This article originally appeared here. –

If you’re in the type of business that extends credit to customers, then you’re officially in the business of collecting debts.

Unfortunately, collecting debts can oftentimes be difficult, time-consuming, and fruitless — not to mention a drain on your financial resources.

Kirsten Quigley, left, and Cristina Bourelly of Lunchskins

Startup 3greenmoms wants you to BYOB, and they’re not talking about booze.

In a move that taps demand for sustainable products, the Potomac, Maryland-based company markets a variety of reusable storage bags that replace the ubiquitous plastic baggies consumers use and throw out in staggering proportions.

“I was probably using a least a dozen baggies a day between three kids and packing lunches and snacks,” said company cofounder Cristina Bourelly, who developed reusable fabric “LunchSkins” with fellow moms Kirsten Quigley and Jennie Stoller Barakat.

The team has been selling their bags, priced at retail from $7.85 to $10.95, depending on size, since 2009. Available in colorful, eye-catching patterns, LunchSkins are made from durable cotton fabric used in commercial pastry bags and can withstand high heat. Coated with a food-safe polyurethane liner, they can be thrown in the dishwasher or washing machine, giving them a lifespan of about three years and boosting their appeal to eco-conscious shoppers.

– George F. Brown, Jr. is a business strategy consultant specializing in business-to-business growth issues. Reuters spoke to him about the topic of a new book he co-authored, CoDestiny: Overcome Your Growth Challenges by Helping Your Customers Overcome Theirs (Greenleaf Book Group). –

Q: You talk about what happens when a business becomes a bull’s eye, that is, the target of rivals looking to undercut by price. How does this happen to small companies when they’re rarely dominant players in their market?
A: Small business is rarely the largest provider to a large company, but I’ve seen quite a few instances where a small business is a key supplier to another small business.

Q: How do you know if you’re becoming the bull’s eye?

A: Whether you’re a big business or a small business, if you sit back and reflect and this sounds right, I’m fairly important, I’m fairly visible, I could see the competitors and the procurement managers taking aim at me – assume it’s going to happen at some point and begin to prepare for that day.

– Kara Ohngren is a writer and editor at SecondAct. This article originally appeared here. The views expressed are her own. –

Judi Henderson-Town felt trapped. For years she was unhappy as an account executive at such industry giants as Johnson & Johnson and United Airlines. She found corporate life “soul-destroying.”

“I wanted something more entrepreneurial,” said the 53-year-old Henderson-Town. “But I didn’t know it was an option — no one I knew growing up owned their own business.”

– Mark Suster is a former serial entrepreneur and a partner at Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners. This article originally appeared on Suster’s blog “Both Sides of the Table”. The views expressed are his own. –

This is the final part of a three-part series on the major changes in the structure of the software and the venture capital industries. Read Part One and Part Two.

Or the Cliff Note’s version:

Open source and cloud computing (led by Amazon) drove down tech startup costs by 90 percent The result was a massive increase in startups and a whole group of new funding sources: both angels and “micro VCs” With more competition in early-stage many VCs are investing smaller amounts at earlier stages. Some are going later stage to not miss out on hot deals. I call this “stage drift.” The opportunities for tech startups today are more immense than they’ve ever been with billions of people now connected to the Internet nearly all the time.

But …

– Mark Suster is a former serial entrepreneur and a partner at Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners. This article originally appeared on Suster’s blog “Both Sides of the Table”. The views expressed are his own. –

This is the second in a three-part series on the changes to the software industry over the past decade that has led to changes in the venture capital industry itself. Read Part 1 here.

If you don’t want to read that post, the summary is:

Open source computing drove computing costs down 90 percent, which spurred innovation in technology Open cloud led by Amazon with their AWS services drove total operating costs down by 90 percent. This led to an explosion in startups. Amazon in turn led to the formation of an earlier stage of venture capital now led by what I call “micro VCs” who typically invest $250,000 to 500,000 in companies rather than the $5 to $7 million that VCs used to invest.

These trends have put pressure on traditional VCs. Some have done earlier-stage deals and done well. Others have chased earlier-stage but lack the skills or relationships to do this effectively. Some have moved into later stage investments in an effort to “put logos on their websites.”