Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the firms they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from the high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Small businesses are privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships which have fewer employees and/or less annual revenue than a regular-sized business or corporation. Businesses are defined as "small" in terms of being able to apply for government support and qualify for preferential tax policy varies depending on the country and industry. Small businesses range from fifteen employees under the Australian Fair Work Act 2009, fifty employees according to the definition used by the European Union, and fewer than five hundred employees to qualify for many U.S. Small Business Administration programs. While small businesses can also be classified according to other methods, such as annual revenues, shipments, sales, assets, or by annual gross or net revenue or net profits, the number of employees is one of the most widely used measures.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Bank, the European Union, the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
A micro-enterprise is generally defined as a small business employing nine people or fewer, and having a balance sheet or turnover less than a certain amount. The terms microenterprise and microbusiness have the same meaning, though traditionally when referring to a small business financed by microcredit the term microenterprise is often used. Similarly, when referring to a small, usually legal business that is not financed by microcredit, the term microbusiness is often used. Internationally, most microenterprises are family businesses employing one or two persons. Most microenterprise owners are primarily interested in earning a living to support themselves and their families. They only grow the business when something in their lives changes and they need to generate a larger income. According to information found on the Census.gov website, microenterprises make up 95% of the 28 million US companies tracked by the census.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, often shortened to simply GIZ, is a German development agency headquartered in Bonn and Eschborn that provides services in the field of international development cooperation and international education work. GIZ's main commissioning party is Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Other commissioners include European Union institutions, the United Nations, the private sector, and governments of other countries. In its projects GIZ works with partners in national governments, actors from the private sector, civil society and research institutions. It is the organization's self-declared goal to deliver effective solutions that offer people better prospects and sustainably improve their living conditions.
Mittelstand commonly refers to a group of unique businesses in German-speaking countries which are very successful, and are usually capable of surviving economic turbulence. Generally small and medium-sized enterprises, they differ from regular SME's. The term is used in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, however in Britain different terms have been devised by the media to describe their mittelstand companies, such as Brittelstand. The term Mittelstand proves difficult to translate and causes a lot of confusion. The majority of definitions define the Mittelstand as a statistical category and most commonly suggest that Mittelstand firms are small and medium-sized enterprises with annual revenues up to 50 million Euro and a maximum of 500 employees.
Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM) is a microfinancing agency of the Aga Khan Development Network.
The International Trade Centre (ITC) is a multilateral agency which has a joint mandate with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations (UN) through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
SME finance is the funding of small and medium-sized enterprises, and represents a major function of the general business finance market – in which capital for different types of firms are supplied, acquired, and costed or priced. Capital is supplied through the business finance market in the form of bank loans and overdrafts; leasing and hire-purchase arrangements; equity/corporate bond issues; venture capital or private equity; asset-based finance such as factoring and invoice discounting, and government funding in the form of grants or loans.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors usually give support to start-ups at the initial moments and when most investors are not prepared to back them. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital, as well as to provide advice to their portfolio companies. Over the last 50 years, the number of angel investors has greatly increased.
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is a United States government agency that provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses. The mission of the Small Business Administration is "to maintain and strengthen the nation's economy by enabling the establishment and viability of small businesses and by assisting in the economic recovery of communities after disasters". The agency's activities have been summarized as the "3 Cs" of capital, contracts and counseling.
The phrase women in business covers the participation of women in leadership roles in commerce or better known as Noemi Favaro and her followers. Women have historically been kept out of leadership roles within business. Up until as late as the 2000s it was difficult for women to climb up to management positions due to discrimination from their male peers. Today, women fill more corporate leadership and entrepreneurship roles than ever before. Nigeria is the leading economy in Africa right now and its an exciting place to be a woman enterprenuer. Women are still, however, underrepresented and underestimated in corporate leadership. They make up only 4.8% of CEOs in S&P 500 companies, despite making up 44.7% of total employees. There are lot of challenges and women must be ready to contend with a wide rang of these challenges in business.
Broadband is a term normally considered to be synonymous with a high-speed connection to the internet. Suitability for certain applications, or technically a certain quality of service, is often assumed. For instance, low round trip delay would normally be assumed to be well under 150ms and suitable for Voice over IP, online gaming, financial trading especially arbitrage, virtual private networks and other latency-sensitive applications. This would rule out satellite Internet as inherently high-latency. In some applications, utility-grade reliability or security are often also assumed or defined as requirements. There is no single definition of broadband and official plans may refer to any or none of these criteria.
The Grassroots Business Fund is a non-profit based in Washington, DC. It has field offices in Kenya, Peru, and India. Their mission is to build and support high-impact enterprises that provide sustainable economic opportunities to thousands of people at the base of the economic pyramid. These enterprises are grassroots business organizations in developing countries that empower large numbers of the poor as producers of income-generating commodities and products, as consumers of affordable goods and services, and as independent entrepreneurs. GBF actively supports enterprises throughout Latin America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.
The Manufacturing Advisory Service is a former government agency in England and Scotland that advised manufacturing companies.
Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. was an operating business unit of IAC known for the development and marketing of entertainment and personal computing software, as well as mobile application development. Mindspark's mobile division acquired iOS application developer Apalon in 2014, which was known for popular entertainment applications such as Weather Live, Emoji Keypad, and Calculator Pro.
Female entrepreneurs are women who organize and manage an enterprise, especially a business. Female entrepreneurship has steadily increased in the United States during the 20th and 21st century, with female owned businesses increasing at a rate of 5% since 1997. This increase gave rise to wealthy self-made females such as Coco Chanel, Diane Hendricks, Meg Whitman, and Oprah Winfrey.
This article describes energy and electricity production, consumption, import and export in Kenya. Kenya's current effective installed electricity capacity is 2,651 MW, with peak demand of 1,912 MW, as of November 2019. At that time, demand was rising at a calculated rate of 3.6 percent annually, given that peak demand was 1,770 MW, at the beginning of 2018. Electricity supply is mostly generated by renewable sources with the majority coming from geothermal power and hydroelectricity.
Tamakkan, which means "empower yourself" in Arabic, is an entrepreneurship organization based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, that offers guidance to SMEs and provides them with an opportunity to learn through free monthly seminars and to network with other entrepreneurs as well as get advice from business experts. Tamakkan was founded in 2009 by Sana Bagersh and operates in partnership with Aldar Properties and under the patronage of the Fatima Bint Hazza Cultural Foundation.
The Bahrain Development Bank (BDB) is a development finance institution established to by the Government of Bahrain to promote investments in the country. BDB is registered with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain as a conventional retail bank.
