Small Business, Big Opportunity: A Fireside Chat with SBS Commissioner Kevin Kim

Small businesses are the backbone of New York City, and for Black entrepreneurs the gap between a good idea and a thriving business is too often a gap in access: to capital, to information and to the people who control the resources. On Tuesday, November 1, 2022, Gentlemen's Factory brought one of those people straight to the room.

Kevin D. Kim, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS), joined Jeff Lindor, founder and CEO of Gentlemen's Factory, at our Innovation Lab in downtown Brooklyn to talk about what the City offers small businesses, and about its Black Entrepreneurs NYC initiative.

Opening the evening

The City's resources for small businesses

The conversation started with the practical question every entrepreneur in the room had: what can the City actually do for my business? Commissioner Kim walked through the resources and initiatives SBS offers small business owners, from getting started and staying compliant to financing, training and finding customers.

BE NYC: Black Entrepreneurs NYC

A large part of the evening focused on Black Entrepreneurs NYC (BE NYC), the SBS initiative launched in September 2019 to advance Black entrepreneurship. The need is clear in the City's own numbers: Black New Yorkers make up 22% of the city's population, but own just 3.5% of its businesses.¹

BE NYC's services include:

• BE NYC Startup Intensive, a free 40-hour course that gives Black entrepreneurs the knowledge and skills to launch and run a business in NYC.
• Free legal services through a partnership with Volunteers of Legal Service (VOLS).
• Webinars and events tailored for Black entrepreneurs.
• A directory of Black-owned businesses so New Yorkers can find and support them.

The City's BE NYC briefing paper puts the stakes plainly: families with a self-employed head of household earn about two times the average income and have nearly six times the net worth of families whose head of household works for someone else.² Entrepreneurship is one of the most direct paths to closing the racial wealth gap.

Questions from the room

Then the floor opened. Business owners and aspiring founders asked the Commissioner directly about the challenges they face, and he answered them one by one.

After the chat

The conversation kept going long after the formal program, with entrepreneurs lining up for one-on-one time with the Commissioner and making connections with each other.

Why it matters

Programs only work if the people they are built for know about them and can reach them. Bringing the Commissioner of Small Business Services into a room full of Black and Brown entrepreneurs turns a government program into a conversation, and a conversation into a next step. It is the same work behind our Build Your Business cohort and our Wealth & Ownership cohort.

Thank you to Commissioner Kevin D. Kim and the NYC Department of Small Business Services for joining us, and to every entrepreneur who came ready to build.