Entrepreneurs and small business owners in the Birmingham area have a new place to find resources they need to grow and succeed.
Bham BizHub is an interactive website that allows entrepreneurs and small business owners to find organizations in the region that can help them with funding, product design, incubation, business planning, communications, marketing, talent, space and events.
“In one website, you find easily accessible tools so entrepreneurs know what resources are available, what services they provide and how to connect with them,” said Virginia Sauer, a market analyst for Birmingham Business Alliance. “The idea was that we have one place where we could understand exactly what resources are available in the region for entrepreneurs. We have that organized by types of services and if they work specifically with startups or small businesses.”
Sauer was one of several people who collaborated on the website. They discussed details Wednesday morning with a group of area business leaders and entrepreneurs during a special presentation at the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama‘s headquarters in downtown Birmingham.
“It was a huge collaborative project,” said Daisy Homolka, an analyst for Alabama Capital Network. “There were at least 10 organizations that, at certain points, were giving us advice and input about what they know from entrepreneurs, what they would like to see in the Birmingham area and then even just the core working group of people who’ve been making it — we come from three different organizations. It’s been really awesome to work with everyone.”
Sauer said the website is not finished.
“We have our beta resource guides that we’ve created from a knowingly incomplete data set, so we’re working on completing that data set,” Sauer said. “We are working to come up with more long-term solutions, hopefully working in the fall with a local web developer to build out a more permanent site, and work with more entrepreneurs to find out what they really want and need because we don’t want to build a website that doesn’t work the way entrepreneurs need it to.”
To learn more about the project or to use the website, visit bhambizhub.com.
(Courtesy Alabama NewsCenter)
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