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Recent Press Releases (U.S. and international) for magazine issues and staff changes may be found below. Please note that for many issues there exists only a highlights sheet, while for others there may also be a full press release. The cover of FSB's current issue is pictured at right. Please contact the appropriate communications staff member with any questions.
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Highlights of the November 2007 Issue of FSB: FORTUNE Small Business
COVER STORY: Inside the Mind of a Rich Inventor, by Julie Sloane, page 90 If you use voicemail or an iPod, you know the work of Scott Jones. How does he make his ideas pay? Can he really take on Google? In the early '90s Jones made about $50 million on his company, which created the predominate form of voicemail, and he "retired" at age 31. But he found he wasn't the kind of entrepreneur who could just fly off into the sunset in his helicopter. Jones's latest company, ChaCha (chacha.com), is developing a potential rival to Google — a search engine assisted by human experts who will help you find your answer. And here's what Jones claims to have on deck: self-propelled robotic lawn mowers, a method to sequence your entire DNA in one minute, a way to make humans fly. His ambition is to change the way people live, and he figures that any one of his half dozen or so new startups could do just that.
Could higher tolls save you money?, by Alex Taylor III, page 16 Business owners weigh the costs and benefits of congestion pricing. Under a proposal by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, each truck would have to pay $21 every weekday to enter the central business district between the hours of 6am and 6pm. Bloomberg calls it a plan to loosen the knot of traffic that is slowly strangling the city — including its small businesses. Recent studies estimate that traffic jams cost the US economy a whopping $65 billion annually — and the figure is rising. Gridlock costs New York City $4.6 billion in lost revenue, estimates the Partnership for New York City, a group of 200 CEOs who support congestion pricing. Despite opposition, congestion pricing may have legs politically. It's a cheap alternative to building new roads, and it can help cities reduce pollution.
Credit Crunch Hits Small Business, by Ian Mount, page 27 After the subprime meltdown, tapping home equity for capital isn't so easy. Until delinquencies and defaults began to spike, mortgage lenders were only too happy to write loans against home equity without demanding proof of income. That helped thousands of marginal entrepreneurs, who might not have been able to raise money by other means, launch and expand businesses. Today that money is harder to tap. Many lenders who once offered 95% of a home's value to borrowers with credit scores as low as 600 now expect scores of 700 and are capping loans at 80% of property value, says Scott Yonehiro, senior board member of First Security Lending (firstsecuritylending.com), in Burbank, Calif. "It will be this way for quite a few years," he predicts. In the meantime, business owners are finding alternatives. PLUS: Alternative sources of capital. If you were counting on home equity for funding and now can't get a lender to help you tap that capital, there are options. FSB explains how to raid your 401(k), try private lending, and seek government loans.
Faster Drug Tests, by Mina Kimes, page 67 New technology helps speed hiring. Drug use in the workplace costs US companies more than $81 billion a year in turnover and lost productivity, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Not surprisingly, the US drug testing market has grown rapidly in recent years and is now valued at more than $1.5 billion annually. eScreen, which expects to rack up $50 million in sales this year, commands about 5% of that market, which is dominated by big players such as Quest Diagnostics (questdiagnostics.com). Unlike traditional tests, which must typically be mailed off for review by medical personnel, eScreen's exams are processed on the spot, then posted on the Internet. eScreen's lightning speed derives from automation. The process still starts with a plastic cup, but it ends with a single mouse click.
Avoiding the Kiddie Tax, by John J. Curran, page 82 By hiring a child and boosting earned income, you might avoid the expanded levy. The Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act of 2007 does offer some juicy tax breaks to entrepreneurs. But it also includes a potential headache: an expansion of the kiddie tax, which limits the amount of investment wealth that parents can shift to a child to take advantage of the youngster's lower tax rate. In tax year 2007 your child can report only about $1,700 of passive investment income before triggering your tax rate (the amount rises annually with inflation). Congress is also tinkering with the age limits. In 2006 the cutoff age for kiddie tax purposes was increased from 14 to 18; the latest change, which takes effect in tax year 2008, raises the age to 19 — and up to 24 for full-time students.
Ethics in a Bottle, as told to Jessica Harris, page 44 Peter Thum describes how he broke the rules to build a charitable — and profitable — company. Nestled in the coolers of more than 7,000 Starbucks stores sits Ethos Water, a 23.6-ounce bottle festooned with a map of the world. The company was founded by Peter Thum, a former beverage consultant who dreamed of providing clean drinking water to Third World countries by selling expensive bottled water in the West. For every bottle sold, Ethos would donate part pf the profit to clean-water initiatives in developing countries such as Honduras and Kenya. After three years of bootstrapping a concept that repelled most investors, Thum sold Ethos to Starbucks for $7.7 million in 2005. By 2010, Ethos plans to give more than $10 million a year to nonprofits that fund safe-water projects.
Bring the Sun Inside, by Brandi Stewart, page 51 Innovative skylights can help shrink your office electricity bill. Small-business owners nationwide are paying more each year to operate their air conditioners, heaters, and lights. Well-designed natural-lighting systems can help reduce energy consumption in commercial facilities, particularly single-floor manufacturing or retail spaces. "Maximizing the use of daylight is probably the single most important strategy to achieving energy reduction in the nation's buildings," says Abby Vogen Horn of the Energy Center of Wisconsin (ecw.org), a nonprofit research organization in Madison. Apart from slashing utility bills and helping the planet, the use of natural lighting in retail outlets may promote higher sales and improve the performance of office workers. As more light is shed on the benefits of daylighting, experts expect the market for these products to keep expanding.
Give the Xbox a Rest, by Brandi Stewart, page 114 New board games for the holidays, from small companies.
PLUS STARTUP: Sports Business: Tattoo Timer: Graham Henshaw, a product-development engineer and marathoner from Chicago, grew tired of using a pacing band, a bracelet on which runners write data, to time training runs. He came up with an idea: Replace the bracelets with temporary tattoos. Henshaw launched PaceTat (pacetat.com) in March, then moved to Washington, D.C., to market the product full-time. By late September he had sold 30,000 tattoos, which come in 12 verions for different paces.
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