My Letter to Obama

So, I was inspired by a young girl who wrote to Obama asking him to fix her crumbling school. Our plight is not as humble or altruistic, but we are Americans with a problem and here is how I tried to make President Obama feel sorry for us in the form of a letter:

Dear President Obama,

I am a 22 year old entrepreneur from Chicago, IL. I currently reside in Boston, MA. In May, I graduated from Boston University with a business degree and concentration in entrepreneurship. In school we learned the fundamentals of fundraising for our start-ups as well as the various sources from which we would be able to raise capital. For the past 10 months, I have been working to start-up my own company with a group of talented, young post-grads. In October, I was laid off from my full time job at a small software company along with two of my co-workers and business partners. At the time, we made the recession our excuse to focus our time on the start-up venture so that we could make a living and create jobs for 5-6 Americans. Once we grow, we often said, we would be able to hire more people and do our part for the economic cycle.

I went to school to become an entrepreneur. You can imagine my surprise almost a year later to discover that the SBA does not give loans to people like me. Instead they give loans to the top ten largest companies in the United States. My team’s idea is a good one. The idea is supported by a vast amount of market data and research and financial projections, and is an idea that falls under the “recession-proof” category. My predicament is that my job is with my company. Unfortunately, I do not know when my dream will be realized because my government does not support it. My team is trying to sell equity to family and friends, but people are as protective of their money as ever, and understandably so.

If only there existed a body within the SBA (or better yet, independent from the SBA, thus independent from financial institutions) that loaned specifically to start-up entrepreneurs, this country may see some unrivaled innovation that has been missing since the early industrial revolution.

Thank you