On February 27 over 50 men and women from the Greater New Haven area visited Yale University for the second annual Small Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Development (SEED) Conference, hosted and presented by Elmseed. The conference brought together entrepreneurs and business leaders from throughout the New Haven community and provided business owners with workshops on business management skills covering such topics as legal requirements, accounting and marketing. Workshop speakers included Dennis Brown, vice president of business counseling for the Connecticut Community Investment Group; Sandra Cahill, associate director of the University of Hartford’s Entrepreneurial Center; and Yale Law School students Albert Osueke, David Peloquin and Rachel Zernik, members of the school’s Small Business Legal Services Clinic.
The conference was an overwhelming success and allowed attendees to interact with other entrepreneurs, speakers, volunteers and staff from local small-business resrouces such as the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) and the First Community Bank of New Haven.
Stephanie and Darin Wilborne were first time SEED conference attendees. Stephanie is preparing to launch a healthcare information website called healthlit.com and came to the conference to learn more about the nuts and bolts of starting a business. After attending the panels in the morning, she felt she had learned so much more about the opportunities available to entrepreneurs in the area and is planning on applying for an Elmseed loan to help get her company off the ground.
Carol Carter-Mins, an Elmseed client since last year, owns a financial and tax advisory service. She felt that all the panels had been “wonderful and informative” and said that the information imparted was a “confirmation of all that we need to do as business owners.” She particularly enjoyed the session on business expansion.
Cheryl George, an Elmseed client since October 2009, was so excited about the conference that she brought her friend Stephanie Ronan along with her. Both raved about the accounting panel, which they said made accounting seem both essential and easy. Stephanie Ronan is currently hoping to open up a cake design business and is exploring the possibility of an Elmseed loan to make that dream possible.
We are all ready looking forward to next year’s conference!