Main Street Businesses

The Brian Hamilton Foundation supports main street businesses through information. By connecting aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners with experienced entrepreneurs who provide business education, we aim to jump start entrepreneurship. Our free online course pulls in decades of entrepreneurship experience from dozens of entrepreneurs who have successfully started, run, and grown businesses across multiple industries and sectors. 

Background on the Problem

The idea of Entrepreneurship for All goes beyond tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. There are 28 million businesses in the United States and most of them are not elite tech ventures. Instead, the majority of these businesses provide simple everyday necessities such as dry cleaning, auto repair, and lawn care. Today, fewer people start small businesses than in the past due in large part to the lack of start-up capital. Further, many established businesses stall or fail because they are locked out of capital markets. Main street businesses often do not have the growth potential of tech companies to attract equity capital and are not considered “safe enough” by banks to obtain loans. Yet, these same businesses represent up to 66 percent of the total businesses in the country.