Skip to content

Capital landscape report identifies gaps entrepreneurs face

Capital Landscape Report
Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers, Capital Landscape Report, Kauffman Foundation

Front and center is the need for innovative funding solutions.

Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers | 2021 Update
Read the 2021 updated report >

From the stage at Finovate’s spring conference in San Francisco, Victor Hwang, Kauffman’s vice president of Entrepreneurship, announced the release of Kauffman’s capital landscape report, “Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers.”

Lack of access to capital is often cited as one of the primary barriers facing entrepreneurship. This report surveys the current knowledge landscape regarding access to capital with an eye toward innovative concepts for improvement to capital access systems.

Access to capital plays an important role in entrepreneurship, both in direct and indirect ways. External private institutional capital – in other words, bank lending and venture capital – dominates the research and public discourse. Yet, at least 83% of entrepreneurs do not access bank loans or venture capital at the time of startup. Almost 65% rely on personal and family savings for startup capital, and close to 10% carry balances on their personal credit cards.

In fact, entrepreneurs face geographic, demographic, and wealth barriers, exacerbated by a capital market structure that does not effectively find and support the majority of entrepreneurs. There is significant unmet demand for financing.

Explore how Kauffman is addressing this issue:

You may also be interested in: The barriers to funding parity persist for Black women >

Next