Gender Similarities & Differences in Entrepreneurs

While a popular book once proclaimed that “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,” that’s not really true when we’re talking about entrepreneurs. A new Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy-sponsored report finds that men and women entrepreneurs share more similarities than differences. The study’s main conclusion is that, when other factors are controlled, gender does not affect a new venture’s performance. Women and men often decide to become entrepreneurs for different reasons, but these differences don’t appear to have a huge effect on the bottom line. What are some key differences? Men are more likely to start a technology business and to start a business with a primary objective of making money. Women, in turn, are more likely to operate in low risk/return business sectors. Women were more likely to operate a business with positive revenue, while men are more likely to own a firm with employees. In the past, these many interesting trends led some researchers to suspect major differences in male and female entrepreneurs. This new research contends that most of the differences in firm performance are due to past industry or start-up experience as opposed to gender differences.

Download the September 2007 Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy-sponsored report, “Are Male and Female Entrepreneurs Really That Different?” by Erin Kepler and Scott Shane.

© 2007 The Public Forum Institute and the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship at www.publicforuminstitute.org/nde.

Revised SBA Small Business FAQ Debuts

The SBA Office of Advocacy has just released the 2007 version of the Small Business Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ.

The Small Business FAQ contains the latest federal data on small business (those with fewer than 500 employees), including an updated estimate of the number of small businesses, which now has reached 26.8 million. This total includes both employer firms (more than 6 million) and non-employer firms (more than 20 million). The FAQ also contains statistics on small business contributions to the economy, as well as data on small business survival, owner demographics, health care questions, regulatory costs, and federal procurement.

Click here for your copy of the FAQ.

SBA Issues Agency Procurement Scorecard

In August, the Small Business Administration released its first ever Small Business Procurement Scorecard. The scorecard rates 24 federal agencies’ performance in meeting small business procurement goals: whether they have reached their annual small business contracting goals and their progress in making contracting opportunities available to small businesses. The grading system uses colors—green, yellow, and red—to indicate the agency’s degree of success in meeting stated goals and standards.

The scorecard will help agencies measure their achievements and progress in making contracting opportunities available to small businesses, improve the accuracy of contracting data regarding small businesses, and provide the public the opportunity to assess agencies’ performance in meeting these goals. For fiscal year 2006, the scorecard rated seven agencies green, five yellow, and 12 red in meeting their small business procurement goals.

In the category of progress toward making contracting opportunities available, 12 agencies were rated green, eight yellow, and four red. Each federal agency has a different small business contracting goal, determined annually in consultation with SBA. SBA ensures that the sum total of all of the goals exceeds the 23 percent target established by law.

For fiscal year 2006, $77.7 billion in federal contracts were awarded to small businesses, up $2.7 billion from the previous year. This amount is 22.8 percent of federal procurement subject to small business goals, just short of the overall goal established by law at 23 percent.

SBA’s scorecard builds on a series of initiatives by the Bush Administration to improve small business access to federal contracts. At the request of the White House’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy and SBA, federal agencies spent months reviewing 11 million contract actions from the past two years to cleanse the federal contracts database of miscoded contracts. On June 30, federal regulations were changed so that contracts awarded to small companies that were subsequently acquired by large corporations will no longer count towards federal agency small business goals—even if the acquisition took place before the rule change.

The scorecard is located at http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents
/sba_homepage/sbgr_fy_2006_small_businesspr.html.

The Small Business Advocate

Advocacy: the voice of small business in government

The Small Business Administration Advocacy is turning its attention to the existing regulatory burden facing small business. By one estimate, the total cost to comply with current regulations is $1.1 trillion, and small business pays a disproportionate share of that cost. Advocacy wants to reduce regulatory burden by identifying and reforming existing rules that are outdated, ineffective, or unworkable. You can help them identify burdensome rules and regulations that affect YOUR business. Advocacy’s new Regulatory Review and Reform— or r3—initiative (www.sba.gov/advo/r3 ) is designed to give small business a voice in the review and reform of existing rules. Just as the RFA training effort has been successful in helping agencies consider small business when making new rules, the r3 initiative will work to help agencies consider small business when evaluating their existing rules.

SBA’s r3 Website Features Nomination How-To’s
The Small Business Administration Advocacy’s r3 website contains new information and updates.
Advocacy recently added complete nomination criteria guidelines to assist small businesses in nominating regulations that should be reviewed. Visit www.sba.gov/advo/r3/r3_nomination.pdf to consult the guidelines. Submit nominations to advocacy@sba.gov or contact Assistant Chief Counsel Keith Holman at (202) 205-6936.

A complete series of questions and answers regarding the r3 initiative is now available at www.sba.gov/advo/r3/r3_questions.pdf.
All r3 initiative information can be found at www.sba.gov/advo/r3.

Minority Procurement Seminar -- U.S. House of Representatives

In an effort to increase the level of participation by minority vendors in contracting opportunities with the U.S. House of Representatives, the Committee on House Administration is sponsoring a Minority Procurement Seminar on September 27, 2007 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C. This seminar will provide step-by-step instructions for bidding on contracts within the agencies listed below. More than 50 contractors from all over the country have already registered for this event.

This session will focus on the contracts available in the offices of the Architect of the Capitol (AOC), the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), the General Services Administration, and the Small Business Administration. The seminar will provide information on how to qualify for the small and minority business contract lists that some agencies maintain. It will also provide information on how to navigate the Federal contracting and bidding processes. In recent years, the AOC has provided more than $675 million dollars in contracts to private vendors, and the CAO has let approximately $300 million in contracts.

Participants are accepted on a first come, first served basis. Once the seats are filled, waiting lists are established and those aspiring attendees will be notified if a slot becomes available. The Committee on House Administration must have registration fees by close of business on September 10, 2007.

View the PDF file for more information and a registration form. Or contact: Sterling Spriggs or Janice Crump at (202) 225-2061.

A Federal Procurement Bonanza—Are You Getting Your Share?

U.S. federal procurement costs have soared during the Iraqi war, breaking the $400 billion mark for the first time in fiscal 2006 with a nearly 10% year-to-year increase to $425 billion, and much of that money goes to a handful of defense-industry contractors, Government Executive reports. Lockheed Martin's came to $33 billion, up 27% from the previous year and a total that eclipses the procurement budgets of all civilian federal agencies. Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics and Raytheon had smaller but nonetheless substantial increases, while the war helped private-security firm Blackwater join the list of top 200 players for the nearly $600 million it received for work in Iraq. Let us know if you want to become more successful in your contracting efforts.