Zulama falls squarely in the category of "small businesses located in areas outside the traditional hubs for venture capital investment". While the availability of venture capital in Pittsburgh has improved slightly over time, it is still difficult to raise investment here.
Furthermore, my company is in education, which is traditionally an industry that investors tend to avoid due to the long, difficult sales cycles.
The marketplace we are creating with Zulama has the potential to completely disrupt the way schools purchase and use curriculum. We enable teachers and subject-area experts to become course authors, and profit from their efforts. This ends the traditional cycle of textbook publishers being the sole source of expensive, top-down curriculum. Our solution is also better than the "free" options that teachers are left on their own to cobble together because those still cost a significant amount of teacher time (which isn't free).
This Early Stage SBIC program sounds promising, I hope for Zulama's sake that implementation starts sooner rather than later. Time is the enemy of all entrepreneurs!
Comment on FR Doc # 2011-31658
This is comment on Proposed Rule
Small Business Investment Companies: Early Stage SBICs
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