Colorado PTAC helps Small Businesses in El Paso County

June 24, 2016

Small businesses have grown to dominate Colorado Springs economy

Source: The Gazette, May Ortega, June 23, 2016Colorado PTAC

Starting a business is not for the faint of heart.

Colorado Springs used to be known as a city of chain restaurants and franchises. Today, businesses with less than 500 employees make up about 92 percent of the local economy, according to Aikta Marcoulier, director of the Pikes Peak Small Business Development Center.

The SBDC is one of several El Paso County organizations focused on helping those entities. The development center provides resources for existing and starting businesses alike. While 60 percent of the SBDC’s assistance goes to established organizations, the other 40 percent focuses on startups, Marcoulier said. Both encounter issues, but the latter tend to face a barrage of them early on.

“Some of the issues we see, no matter what, are financing your business – more so for startups,” Marcoulier, 38, said. “If you don’t have collateral, you don’t have a lot of income, you don’t have a story to tell yet, so it’s harder to get financing.”

When Sara Kinney founded innovation tech company Rim Technologies LLC in 2010, funding was not as worrisome as it could have been, which she attributed to the SBDC and the Procurement Technical Assistance Center. The latter provides government contracting assistance.  READ MORE….

 Contact your nearest PTAC to learn more about government contracting.

 

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 For help with Government Contracting: contact your nearest Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC). Funded through Cooperative Agreements between the U.S. Department of Defense and state and local governments/institutions, PTACs provide free and low-cost assistance in virtually all areas of government contracting.