--- ---------------------------------------- Study sponsored by Babson College, Boston, MA and Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, MissouriThe United States is awash in private equity capital for new business start-ups with estimates that while some $60 billion was provided to start-up ventures last year, it is increasingly harder for new business start-ups to obtain it, according to a new research study on U.S. entrepreneurship.
The study by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and Babso= n College further revealed that business start-up activity is much more prevalent than initially believed and that government programs to measure the impact of entrepreneurial activity on economic growth are sorely lacking. According to the researchers, experts in the field of entrepreneurship who were interviewed believe that numerous federal, stat= e and local government assistance programs for entrepreneurs are so poorly publicized and marketed that prospective entrepreneurs rarely know they exist. ........... ........... The report estimates that each year Americans start 600,000-800,000 new companies that hire employees. That=E2=80=99s a birth rate of 14-16 start= -ups for every 100 existing businesses, on a par with Canada=E2=80=99s and higher = than any other country=E2=80=99s start-up range. Roughly another two million U.S. = businesses are begun each year as self-employment ventures, without employees. As ma= ny as 8.4 out of every 100 U.S. adults =E2=80=94 16 million Americans in all= =E2=80=94 are currently trying to start a business. ........ Despite the abundance of capital, the report maintains that equity seed capital is harder to obtain in the U.S. than debt capital. Some experts believe that finding start-up financing between $50,000 and $1 million is particularly difficult. As a result, friends, family and work contribute = the lion=E2=80=99s share of seed capital: $56 billion. Venture capitalists pr= ovide about $4 billion for U.S. high-end start-ups, or some 37% of their $12 billion = in new investment each year. ............
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