| The Small Business Entrepreneurship Center (SBEC), a non-profit community organization is providing an umbrella for and creating the Santa Maria Enterprise Center (SMEC) and the Santa Barbara Enterprise Center (SBEC) as well as the Green 2 Gold environmental and renewable energy technologies project – all new, enterprise, non-profit, mixed tech/ mixed use incubators. The SBEC also hosts the Santa Barbara SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives, a program of U.S. SBA) with free monthly open counseling each Wednesday, 8:30am-11:30 am at SBEC location. Chairperson Steven Jones of Wilson Publishing and former president of the Goleta Chamber of Commerce says: “our role is to create more small businesses and help entrepreneurs create jobs and new wealth in our community by establishing new business incubators. This is a county wide effort to nurture entrepreneurship and provide resources, training, mentorship, and access to debt and equity capital for start-ups.” The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) has statistics that show an 87% success rate for new enterprises that go through business incubators. SBEC also has a program for funding resources: “The Loan Guru ™” an ombudsperson for financing options, SBA guaranteed loans and other debt funding. In addition, the SBEC has access to equity or private “angel” and venture capital resources. |