Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream
Karen G. Mills served as Administrator of the United States Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013. She was a member of President Barack Obama's Cabinet. She was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Award by the United States Department of Navy for her contributions to American competitiveness, entrepreneurship, and innovation. She is the President of MMP Group and has a long history of investing in startups as a venture capitalist.
Small businesses are the lifeblood of the American economy. They are the largest employers and provide a path to the American Dream. However, many people find it difficult to obtain the capital they require to operate and succeed. Access to capital for small businesses froze during the Great Recession, and as a result, many community banks closed their doors, and other lenders who had weathered the storm turned to more profitable avenues. Many small businesses faced bleak prospects for years after the financial crisis. But then came a new era of financial technology, or "fintech."
Beginning in 2010, new fintech entrepreneurs identified gaps in the small business lending market and revolutionized the small business owner customer experience. Instead of Xeroxing a stack of paperwork and waiting weeks for a response, small businesses filled out applications online and received responses within hours, if not minutes. Banks rushed to catch up. As technology companies such as Amazon, PayPal, and Square entered the market, new opportunities for even more transformative products and services emerged.
Karen G. Mills, former U.S. Small Business Administrator and Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School, focuses on the capital needs of small businesses and how technology will transform the small business lending market in Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream. This is a thorny market: lenders struggle to determine which small businesses are creditworthy, and borrowers frequently don't know how much money or what type of loan they require. New data streams have the potential to shed light on the murky nature of a small business's finances, making it easier to weather turbulent cash flows and providing more transparency to potential lenders.
Mills describes how fintech has changed and will continue to change small business lending, as well as how financial innovation and prudent regulation can re-establish a path to the American Dream. Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream is an ambitious book that grapples with the broad significance of small business to the economy, the historical role of credit markets, the dynamics of innovation cycles, and the policy implications for regulation. It is relevant to bankers, fintech investors, and regulators, as well as anyone interested in the future of small business in America.
Author: Karen G. Mills
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PMBFW1S
Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 34 reviews)
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