Small Business Resource Center

Featured Articles

Wringing More Cash from Your Small Business

Sometime it pays to leave no stone unturned when you are trying to find ways to preserve cash -- especially with the stiff challenges facing so many small and mid-sized businesses in the current downturn. Robert Chalfin, Wharton lecturer, offers six tips you may not have considered.
Published: July 10, 2009

How to Preserve Cash for Your Business

If you're running a small business today and aren't thinking about how to tighten your belt, you are surely in rarefied company. But if you're like the rest of us, you're scrambling to cover expenses, pay bills and make payroll. We asked Wharton lecturer and small business expert Robert Chalfin, about cost-saving strategies for small- to mid-size businesses. Chalfin is quick to point out that while there are no single solutions, there are numerous steps entrepreneurs can take to cut costs during the current recession.
Published: June 30, 2009

Help to Make the Cash Flow with a Loan Workout

If your business sees trouble ahead and has a bank loan outstanding, a workout might help take the pressure off. In a loan workout, the lender and borrower negotiate to ease the terms of the loan to try to help ensure that it can be repaid. "You can always go in and rework a loan, especially these days," says Lawrence Gelburd, a lecturer on entrepreneurship at Wharton.
Published: June 25, 2009

Merchant Cash Advances Can Ease the Crunch, but Are Costly and Can Be Risky

Merchant cash advances -- also known as business cash advances, and credit-card or charge-card receivables factoring -- offer one more financing alternative for small-business owners seeking short-term working capital when strapped for cash. While the cost of such financing is typically more dear than a bank loan or a credit line -- credit-card factoring companies may charge rates of perhaps 30% -- it may be worth looking into if traditional options are closed to you.
Published: June 18, 2009

Integrate Your Personal and Professional Life in Three Steps

We asked Wharton professor and author Stew Friedman how employers could integrate their personal and work lives to find a productive and comfortable balance. Tough as it is any time, balancing the two can be a huge challenge in a recession when challenges seems to spring from every corner. After all, work isn't everything. On the other hand, some of us are more attached to our careers than others. And we don't all have the same outside commitments or interests.
Published: June 17, 2009

Factoring Can Offer a Short-term Financing Alternative -- but Watch the Fees

Factoring is one option to consider when searching for short-term financing alternatives for your small business. As an asset-based financing arrangement, factoring allows you to sell your accounts receivables or invoices to a specialized financing company -- called a factor -- at a discount. Typically, the factor will pay between 70% and 90% of the value of the receivables and then take over collection efforts.
Published: June 15, 2009

How to Talk About Cash Flow Issues with Vendors

When the going gets tough, even the tough stick their heads in the sand sometimes. For example, when a small business grapples with its cash flow and can't pay vendors on time, the boss might be inclined to ignore the problem in the hope that it will go away on its own. Usually it won't -- and the ostrich-like behavior will only make the situation worse.
Published: June 12, 2009

Cash Management: Five Tips to Help Small Companies

In today's economy, many small and mid-size companies lack sufficient cash reserves to ride out the storm. Finding new customers is tougher than usual. And, as you know, raising prices isn't always an option. So, how can you best manage your company's cash? We asked Eric Siegel, adjunct lecturer in management at the Wharton School and president of Siegel Management, for some tips on how small business owners can net more cash without raising prices or alienating customers.
Published: May 21, 2009

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk: 'Great Companies Are Built on Great Products'

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has three passions: the Internet, space exploration and clean energy. The first paid off handsomely for him in 2002 when he sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. The second is fueled by SpaceX, a company that makes space launch vehicles. Musk's third passion is Tesla Motors, which makes the Tesla Roadster, an electric sports car that claims to go 244 miles per charge and sells for $101,500 or more. In the first of a two-part interview with Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and Knowledge@Wharton, Musk speaks with management professor John Paul MacDuffie, co-director of the International Motor Vehicle Program, about electric cars, hybrids, the Tesla and the mysterious ways of Detroit.
Published: May 13, 2009

Best Practices in Finance: A Roadmap for Funding

Not everyone who runs a business is a financial wizard. And why should they be? People go into business for a variety of reasons -- to transform something they love into something that pays; to honor a family tradition; or for the freedom of working without a boss -- not necessarily because they're good with money. Yet, a company's financial operations are key to its success. That's why Eric Siegel, an adjunct lecturer in management at Wharton School, believes that any entrepreneur who doesn't understand finance ought to hire -- or, at the very least, consult with -- someone who is.
Published: May 11, 2009

The Buzz Starts Here: Finding the First Mouth for Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Getting customers to spread the word about a new product through their social or professional networks is a hot strategy in the marketing world. But how do companies find the right individuals to deliver the message? New research by Wharton marketing professors Raghuram Iyengar and Christophe Van den Bulte finds that traditional targets may not be so influential.
Published: March 04, 2009

What's Behind the Drive for Clean Tech?

Twenty years from now, will Americans light their homes with solar power or wind? Plug their cars into an electric grid? Replace oil-based petroleum with bio-fuels made from algae? Betting on which of those technologies will take hold is hard enough in any environment, but especially so given today's financial crisis. However, this didn't stop entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at the recent Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference from discussing upcoming changes in the energy marketplace, the impact of the new stimulus program and other energy-related issues.
Published: February 18, 2009

Not a Dirty Word: How Companies Use Debt to Improve Their Bottom Line

To many laymen, debt is a dirty word, and plenty of companies have indeed been dragged under by shouldering too much. But academics and other experts have long believed the opposite is true: Many companies take on too little debt, failing to fully exploit benefits like the tax deductions on interest payments. Now, new research by three Wharton faculty members -- Wayne R. Guay, Jennifer Blouin and John E. Core -- shows that companies are not, in fact, foolishly leaving tax deductions on the table.
Published: February 04, 2009

Finding Money for Innovation: Develop Those People Skills

Innovating during a financial crisis is no small challenge. Experts at a recent Wharton panel discussion offered tips: Align innovation goals with company goals, focus on technology that can cut costs, and develop the "street smarts" needed to sell technology initiatives to investors or senior management.
Published: January 07, 2009

---

Seth Berger's Full Court Press: Building a Company from the Ground Up

Seth Berger is founder and former CEO of AND 1, a company specializing in basketball shoes and apparel. Started by Berger and several classmates while they were students at Wharton in the early 1990s, AND 1's original product line featured t-shirts targeted at young basketball players; the company later expanded to offer a full line of apparel. Under Berger's leadership, revenues increased from $1 million in 1993 to more than $200 million in 2001. In 2005, Berger sold AND 1 to American Sporting Goods, a private footwear company based in Anaheim, Calif. Currently the head boys' varsity basketball coach at the Westtown School in Westtown, Pa., Berger spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about what it takes to build a successful company.
Published: October 01, 2008

Betting on Betas: How Internet Entrepreneurs Are Creating New Paths to Online Revenue

Some Internet entrepreneurs are blazing new trails to real revenue in the virtual world. In the examples that emerged from the recent Supernova conference, an annual technology event in San Francisco organized by Wharton professor Kevin Werbach, these models have something in common: building long-term relationships with customers.
Published: July 23, 2008

Learning from Failure: The 'Dark Side' of Being an Entrepreneur

Although nearly 95% of entrepreneurial efforts fail during the first five years, most books about management focus on nearly miraculous tales of success meant to encourage people to reach the top. Few authors concern themselves with studying the factors that are usually responsible for failure, so that others can avoid repeating them. "This is an imperfect approach -- knowing why others are succeeding so that you can avoid failure. It is a lie. To avoid failure you have to know why people usually fail." That is the point of departure for Fernando Tr’as de Bes, author of The Entrepreneur's Black Book. The Spanish-born author is well known around the world, thanks to his best seller, Good Luck, written with Alex Rovira. Recently, he talked with Universia-Knowledge@Wharton and shared his views about how and why entrepreneurs fail.
Published: May 19, 2008