Entrepreneurship and Immigrants

Just the immigrants in California do more for the country than a whole Red State full of  Tea Bigots! Not the least because these immigrants aren’t trying to bring the whole country down because we have a black President like the treason sipping Tea Bigot Republicans are.

Indeed…Save America! Deport a Tea Bigot!

In any event – a salute to those entrepreneurs, who got nothing to do with Silicon Valley…

And everything to do with true American grit!

And often, investment from financial sources outside of the US, which do a far better job at “micro-financing” than the herd mentality, often self destructive American Venture Capital market. That is changing with some of the web based “Crowdfunding” investment models like Rock The Post designed around the needs of small businesses which often only need $10000-200,000 – and not generally millions. New legislation allows small individual investors to purchase up to $1 million in stock or equity, without being restricted by State Blue Sky laws.  Here is how it works.

Insofar as the large number of immigrants starting businesses because of the lack of employment opportunities – about 30% of US incorporations are done by black Americans for much the same reason.

California leads U.S. in immigrant entrepreneurship, study finds

Immigrants own 33% of California’s small businesses, the highest share in the U.S., and make up 27% of the state’s population.

When Gloria Suen opened a retail shop in Chinatown, she and her sister knew so little English they could barely decipher the rules and regulations that govern small businesses. But she asked advice from anyone who would listen and persevered.

“In those days, I had to work 365 days a year from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” she said. “I had to, little by little, learn.”

Today her family-owned small business, Li Hing of Hong Kong, sells ornate Chinese antiques and fine crafts to businesses and homes across the U.S.

Li Hing is part of a movement pushing California to the forefront of a national trend: The state leads the nation in the percentage of businesses owned by immigrants, a share that exceeds the demographic’s proportion of the general population.

One-third of small-business owners in the state are immigrants, according to a report published Thursday by the Fiscal Policy Institute, a New York-based think tank. About 27% of the state’s population was born in a foreign country, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

Getting Hot! Brazils New Emerging Venture-Tech Capital

Something that seems sadly missing in the US of late, Brazil is on it’s way to becoming a tech destination.

Amazing what a little investment capital will do.

Seems to me we’ve lost our way – focusing entirely on productivity improvements, and almost noting on core product which creates industries.

Walter Silva, Marcelo Marzola and Phillip Klein of Predicta.net

Brazil’s Start-Up Generation

Marcelo Marzola, the 33-year-old co-founder of Predicta.net, is a perfect example of how hot Brazil’s $1.6 trillion economy has become — and why its entrepreneurs are now getting their phone calls returned by venture capitalists after a decade of “You’re from where?”

Marzola was invited to present his company’s free online behavioral-targeting tool, BTBuckets, at the Google I/O Web-developer conference in San Francisco in May. To get ogled at the Google conference is the goal of any Web developer. Marzola earned rave reviews for creating what has become a de facto standard, used on more than 2,000 websites in 90 countries by such corporate titans as Pfizer, Motorola and Unilever. The product fills an overlooked niche in the industry by allowing websites to segment their users according to their online habits and then direct targeted content and advertising to them in real time. “It has turned the industry on its head, and it’s gaining mass recognition,” says Daniel Waisberg, an industry consultant and a former chair of marketing of the Web Analytics Association.

The spotlight has attracted about 10 VC firms to Marzola over the past six months. His track record will impress them: the company has been growing at a compound rate of 40% annually since 2005 and has a profit margin of more than 20% on $12 million in revenue. Now he is in the midst of closing a deal with DFJ FIR Capital, a local venture firm with $160 million under management, to raise $15 million to $20 million in exchange for a 35% equity stake to fund his company’s expansion efforts. BTBuckets plans to open offices in major markets in Latin America and the U.S.