Birmingham rated No. 1 in Alabama for starting a business
If you’re an Alabamian looking to join the more than 15 million people in the U.S. who work for themselves, you may want to consider starting a business in the Magic City. Birmingham, Ala. was named the 26th-best city in America to start a business according to a new report from financial site WalletHub. “In order to help aspiring entrepreneurs — from restaurant owners to high-tech movers and shakers — maximize their chances for long-term prosperity, WalletHub’s analysts compared the relative startup opportunities that exist in the 150 most populated U.S. cities,” the site explained. Using a mixture of government data, economic statistics and its own weighting system, analysts examined 18 key metrics — ranging from five-year business survival rate, office space affordability, startups per capita, human capital availability and financing accessibility. Here’s how the other cities in the Yellowhammer State ranked: Mobile: 106th Montgomery: 110th Huntsville: 119th Those looking to start a company outside of Alabama need not look too far. Texas takes home eight of the top 25 spots in the country, and neighbor state Florida another five. Wondering what the top spot in America to launch a business is? That honor goes to Oklahoma City, OK. Meanwhile Seattle, WA. takes home the last city ranked, 150th. Check out how Alabama cities compare to the rest of the country: Source: WalletHub
Entrepreneurial Alabamian Amanda Latifi’s app is shaking things up
In a recent interview with AL.com, Huntsville native Amanda Latifi doled out pieces of wisdom and advice she’s accrued since beginning Hafta Have, a startup in California’s tech-rich Silicon Valley. The daughter of an Iranian immigrant who is an entrepreneur himself, Latifi comes by her chosen profession naturally. “A child of an entrepreneur and engineer, I think I just inherited some of those ‘I must create’ genes,” she told AL.com’s Lucy Berry. Those genes and her own hard work have served Latifi well, earning her company success in relatively short order. An alumna of Huntsville’s Grissom High School and Birmingham-Southern College, Latifi’s didn’t start out looking to be an acclaimed tech entrepreneur “I started out at ad agencies,” said Latifi. “I was a brand strategist for companies like McDonald’s, Skittles, Glade. So, did I start in tech or plan on being here? No. “But, in my previous career I was always more attracted to product innovation and the digital space. I left it behind to join a LA entertainment startup lab founded by Scooter Braun (the manager of Justin Bieber, Tori Kelly, Ariana Grande, etc.) and Ori Birnbaum. We were backed by some heavy hitters: Mark Cuban, Google Ventures, KPCB, Deep Fork, Yuri Milner, etc. I was one of the first hires at the fan club app called Fahlo, now Bkstg. After almost two years of what I would call a crash course in all things tech and startups, I hit a wall. I encountered the burnout everyone previously warned me about. I made the decision to leave, because I honestly didn’t have the passion for the product anymore.” But Latifi’s shopping habit, and desire to work in tech on her own terms led to the innovative app, which was named Best New App in the App Store last week. Here’s how it works: As you go shopping and see items that you love, but aren’t at a price you necessarily want to dole out, scan the items into the app. Hafta Have will store the list for you, and alert you when those pieces are on sale. “We’re a new way to shop,” says the app’s website, “developed (by women) out of what was missing. Lots of us ‘In-store Shoppers’ take pictures of clothes and their tags, so we’ll remember to go back when they’re on sale…regrettably, that’s rarely the case. How dare we leave behind the things we Hafta Have™.” While the app has already earned acclaim, Latifi and her team are currently raising funds to serve their users even better. “We do plan to bring on even more retailers, and categories for users to shop from: baby / kid, home furnishings, men, athletics, the list goes on and on,” Latifi told AL.com. “We are currently expanding into Canada, so I would expect that to be a strong revenue driver as well. From a product perspective we are planning to streamline the conversion process, add additional features to enhance the shopping experience, and create additional revenue streams from our vast shopper data, and opportunities for retailers to drive up-sale and cross-promotion.” As for advice, Latifi says two things are a must in the world of entrepreneurship: coming up with an original idea, and knowing your competition. Also, don’t underestimate your hometown. “Having recently reconnected with the Huntsville scene, I’ve been impressed by the techies and entrepreneurs coming back home, or just moving down South for the first time. Definitely, become part of the network that is growing there, but don’t be scared to travel to TechDay or Disrupt. We have just as much as right to be there as someone from the Bay.” To download the app yourself, find it on your phone’s App Store, or go straight to haftahave.com.
Daniel Sutter: The convention center bubble
Government can importantly help create the conditions under which enterprise and entrepreneurship flourish. The required tasks include protecting property and contract rights, regulating sensibly, and efficiently providing valued public services. Whether active investment of tax dollars in selected enterprises helps grow the economy remains a matter of debate. Recently I wrote about public investment in professional sports stadiums, where billions have been spent, primarily benefiting players and team owners. America has also experienced a government-driven boom for convention and exhibit halls, as detailed in Convention Center Follies by Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio. First, let’s consider the magnitude of the boom. Exhibit hall space across the nation nearly doubled between 1989 and 2011, to more than 70 million square feet. City and state governments spent $13 billion on centers between 2002 and 2011, a period of stagnation in the convention business. The convention center boom has occurred in cities both large and small, and in both the Sunbelt and Rustbelt. Alabama’s four largest cities all have centers, along with Dothan, Gadsden and Ozark. Professor Sanders documents how the rationale for public funding has changed over time. The first public auditoriums in the 1920s provided places for large public gatherings that might not make money. Such auditoriums served a reasonable public purpose. The rationale is now growing the local economy. Convention centers can provide what local economic developers crave, dollars from outside of the community. Out-of-town convention attendees spend on event registration, hotel rooms, restaurants, and so on. Their spending benefits hotels and restaurants, and then sets off a multiplier effect when these businesses and their employees spend the money. Prestigious consulting firms provide precise forecasts of hundreds of millions of dollars of spending and thousands of jobs that convention centers will create. Only reality has consistently fallen short of promises, as Professor Sanders documents. For instance, expansion of the Civic Plaza and construction of a 1,000 room convention center hotel was forecast to bring Phoenix 375,000 visitors a year. Two years after completion, convention attendance was less than half of the forecast, and the hotel could not make its bond payments. As Sanders writes, “Almost every convention center in the U.S. operates at a loss, not even counting the annual debt cost.” Visitor taxes imposed on hotels and rental cars typically fund construction of convention center projects. I recently wrote about how such taxes can be exported and are portrayed as a costless way to make outsiders fund convention centers (and sports stadiums). But as Professor Sanders emphasizes, the tax dollars could be used to improve schools, repair roads, or pay for other public services. Voters across the country have frequently turned down convention center proposals. San Diego voters rejected three proposals, voters in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, each did so twice, and proposals went down in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh. But convention center politics has evolved to eliminate voters from the approval process. End runs have been accomplished by turning to states for funding and creating special purpose authorities to impose visitor taxes and issue bonds. Why have we seen such poor investment by governments? Professor Sanders identifies the owners of the properties (hotels, restaurants and shops) frequented by attendees are located as the driving force. This illustrates how the benefits of many state and local government economic development projects are highly localized. Government is supposed to protect property from physical invasion, not protect or raise the market value of any person’s property. Consequently, convention centers exemplify crony capitalism, or the use of government to provide benefits to favored business interests. State and local governments have spent billions of tax dollars building millions of square feet of underutilized exhibit space. Convention centers, after sports stadium subsidies, represent a second strike against government economic development. Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics with the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University and host of Econversations on TrojanVision. Respond to him at dsutter@troy.edu and like the Johnson Center on Facebook.
