As Gordon Gekko said in the 1987 financial classic Wall Street, "the most valuable commodity I know of is information." And twenty years later, those words are still true (even though a lot of the other nuggets of wisdom that Gordon Geeko offers turned out to be unprescient). Now that you have your small business idea, and you have incorporated successfully using a legal structure that works for you, the next question that you may ask yourself is simply, how do I finance my small business from day-to-day? Well, don't worry readers, we at FizzTalk are right there with you, and we have assembled a litany of resources to help you. Before you go on, you may want to check out this New York Times article, however.

Overview:

This post will discuss a few tools of financing generally available to different types of small business:

1. Loans and lines of credit (from commercial banks)
2. Small Business Administration (SBA) loans
3. Angel investors and Venture Capital
4. Equipment Leasing
5. Accounts Receivable Financing
6. Credit cards, home equity loans

I will discuss each one in turn, outlining the key legal issues to consider. More...

Last week I offered 5 New Year’s resolutions for closing deals in 2010. This week, I thought I’d have a little fun and address the issue of entrepreneurs’ frustration with lawyers. A recent tweet from Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, captures this frustration well: “Lawyers are like phone companies. Their bread and butter is in tricking you into racking up minutes.”

There’s a time in just about every entrepreneur’s career when he or she has wanted, in the words of Shakespeare, to “kill all the lawyers”. In the spirit of David Letterman, here are my Top 10 reasons entrepreneurs hate lawyers (I should point out that “hate” is too strong a word to describe the feelings of most entrepreneurs, but it makes for a catchier title than “dislike” or “complain about”). Click here for a brief video version of this post. More...

My mother always encouraged me to see a silver lining in every storm cloud. Or if that failed, she would simply say, "this too will pass." Starting a new business may be a stressful undertaking, especially given the current economic climate when recent headlines alone might be put the kibosh on any would-be entrepreneur. However, the picture is more complex than such soundbites might suggest.  According to a study by the Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas-City non-profit that promotes a culture of entrepreneurship through research, education and policy, new business formation continues at a steady clip. The January 2010 study found that new business formation was more or less constant through recent history, despite economic ups and downs, a bleak portrait of job losses, varying access to venture capital and other sources of finance and other soft factors. Indeed, Dane Stangler and Paul Kedrosky report (PDF) (in words that seem almost too rosy), "the United States is one of the world's most entrepreneurial companies. It has a high rate of entrepreneurship and a large number of rapidly growing companies that quickly displace an older generation of incumbents. We have a surprisingly steady supply of new firms, despite frequent and sometimes stark changes in economic conditions and markets, and longer-cycle changes in population and education." Though some have pointed out possible problems in the Stangler and Kedrosky's dataset, their point remains that new businesses are still getting incorporated everyday, and some are seeing opportunity even in today's environment.

Now let's say you have the next big (or small and simple) idea, and you are looking to incorporate and get your business plan moving towards fruition. More...

There are various factors to consider when reviewing or drafting a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Obviously, your perspective on the agreement depends on whether you are primarily disclosing or receiving confidential information. The following points should be kept in mind: More...

Founders of startup companies often wait to incorporate a company until they are confident that their concept is viable or fundable.  At some point, however, an entrepreneur will need to formally incorporate a company.  Several reasons exist for taking the step to incorporate. More...