FINANCE
PR Newswire | October 20, 2023
NEWITY, America's source for small business capital, announces access to larger business loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) update to their Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). NEWITY is proud to simplify and streamline access to small business financing for entrepreneurs through an SBA-licensed lender.
The SBA's SOP updates enable lenders to approve larger loans for businesses who meet lower qualification standards, helping more small business owners access capital. The SBA 7(a) program changes that are live in NEWITY's portal include:
Larger loan amounts, enabling borrowers who qualified for a$25,000loan to qualify for a loan up to$50,000
No collateral requirements for loans under$50,000
Lower credit scores accepted for loans between$50,001to$150,000
Relaxed rulings on affiliate businesses and ownership interests
Easier to refinance and consolidate high interest rate debt
Ability for qualifying businesses to receive a secondSBA loan 90 days after the funding of their first SBA loan
Commenting on the SBA SOP updates, David Cody, NEWITY Co-Founder and Co-CEO said, "In pursuing the SBA's mission to 'help Americans start, grow and build resilient businesses', the SBA 7(a) loan program is a financial lifeline for over 33 million small businesses. The SBA's latest updates allow lender service providers like NEWITY to support a broader network of American businesses in accessing a greater amount of capital."
While NEWITY's portal has undergone changes to include the SBA's updates, NEWITY's streamlined application process has not changed. Small businesses can still determine their eligibility for an SBA 7(a) loan in less than 15 minutes without impacting their credit score.
Luke LaHaie, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of NEWITY added, "We're thrilled to offer business owners access to larger loans. Likewise, we're happy to enable lenders to provide larger loans to their clients through our nimble, compliant platform. We're proud to help businesses secure more capital to fuel their success and growth."
The SBA 7(a) application is available to qualifying businesses and accessible in the NEWITY Portal.
About NEWITY
NEWITY is America's source for small business capital, focused on empowering entrepreneurs with access to affordable loan solutions, streamlined tax credits, and trusted service providers – all in one place. NEWITY uses leading technology and real human support to help small businesses make their companies more efficient and profitable. Today, that includes equitable access to SBA 7(a) loans; streamlined processes to claim tax credits; simplified online bookkeeping with Xendoo; customized, competitive insurance with Mylo; personalized business advisory with Cultivate; and access to a marketing agency marketplace with Breef.
Read More
BUSINESS STRATEGY
Calix | September 18, 2023
Calix, Inc. has announced the launch of Calix SmartBiz in the United Kingdom (UK). This recent development empowers alternative service providers (altnets) to expand their markets with a tailored managed service explicitly designed to cater to the unique requirements of the 5.5 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within the UK.
SmartBiz, on the Calix broadband platform, encompasses all the essential elements altnets need to foster SME growth within their communities. This includes managed Wi-Fi services (both indoor and outdoor), top-notch network security, business productivity applications, and high-speed internet access.
Historically, altnets lacked access to a broadband solution designed explicitly for SMEs, leaving them with the choice of repurposing residential products or downsizing complex and costly enterprise-grade solutions to accommodate the SME market. The introduction of SmartBiz provides altnets with a turnkey solution that not only enables the creation of additional revenue streams but also facilitates the expansion of their subscriber base, empowering them to compete more effectively within the fiercely competitive broadband markets.
SmartBiz comprises two main components: SmartBizWorx productivity software and the CommandWorx mobile app. CommandWorx is seamlessly integrated with the award-winning Calix Wi-Fi systems and Calix Support Cloud, allowing for self-service access to SmartBiz and its associated features. Small business owners can conveniently monitor and manage SmartBiz from any location using a user-friendly app tailored to their specific needs. Furthermore, a customizable customer Wi-Fi portal empowers business owners to offer secure and convenient internet access while enhancing brand loyalty.
Eoin Heaney, VP of international at Calix, stated:
SMEs underpin the UK economy. With an annual turnover of £1.4 trillion, they account for more than 30 percent of UK revenue and employ almost half the country's workforce.
[Source: Business Wire]
He also pointed out that small business owners face numerous challenges, including the search for suitable productivity solutions to support their growth. With SmartBiz, altnets can now offer SMEs the essential productivity capabilities they require, eliminating the need for dedicated IT staff or the typically associated hefty price tag.
Furthermore, Heaney highlighted that SmartBiz represents an opportunity for altnets to expand their business or explore new markets. He expressed enthusiasm about collaborating with innovative altnets such as Connexin, who provide distinctive managed services that empower their SME customers to focus on their core competency, which is running their own businesses.
SmartBiz also equips small business owners with:
Dedicated Networks for Enhanced Productivity:With network access control, SmartBiz offers pre-configured, dedicated primary, staff, point-of-sale, and customer networks. This ensures that every user enjoys appropriate access to the network resources they require, significantly improving role efficiency and overall productivity.
Robust Network-Level Security:To safeguard staff, customers, and critical business infrastructure from cyber threats, SmartBiz delivers robust security features alongside network-specific, customizable content restrictions.
Network Resilience:Recognizing that network outages can prove catastrophic for SMEs, SmartBiz provides automatic cellular failover, ensuring that SMEs can continue their operations uninterrupted, maintaining productivity levels, and preventing potential losses, which can be as high as £20,000 per hour of downtime.
About Calix
Calix is a leading global provider of cloud and software platforms, systems, and services essential for the realization of the unified access network and intelligent premises of the future. With a forward-looking perspective, it empowers its customers to forge the networks of tomorrow by adopting a DevOps operating model, enabling them to optimize the subscriber experience through the strategic application of big data analytics. Furthermore, the company simplifies the intricacies of the smart home and business, converting them into lucrative avenues for generating new streams of revenue.
Read More
TECHNOLOGY
Cloudinary | September 22, 2023
Cloudinary, a renowned image and video platform, has recently unveiled an addition to its asset management suite with the launch of Cloudinary Nexus. This digital asset management (DAM) solution is explicitly tailored to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Available immediately, Cloudinary Nexus offers both free and premium options. This AI-powered solution empowers SMBs and teams with enterprise-grade capabilities, making it effortless for them to connect, explore, and optimize their digital assets, all while streamlining their branding efforts with minimal time and complexity.
Drawing upon the strengths of Cloudinary's acclaimed DAM solution designed for enterprise clientele, known as Cloudinary Assets, Nexus equips smaller brands with the ability to automate essential yet time-consuming tasks associated with asset management. Nexus incorporates advanced AI functionalities and automation to handle tasks like metadata tagging and file format and size optimization. This ensures that teams can dedicate more of their time to more rewarding and high-impact activities. Nexus places significant emphasis on user-friendliness and accessibility, making it a valuable asset for a wide range of teams and individuals.
With features such as generative AI, Studio, collections, smart search, and auto-tagging, Nexus equips users with all the tools necessary to unlock the full potential of their images and videos. It enables users to:
Instantly Prepare Images and Videos: Users can effortlessly adapt designs, resize, and fine-tune assets in bulk within seconds. The inclusion of subject-aware AI enables the generation of new assets, while readily available creative presets facilitate the creation of multiple variations from a single master asset.
Transform User-Generated Content into Brand-Ready Assets: AI and automation simplify the task of moderating, managing, and approving user uploads, requiring minimal to no effort.
Facilitate Seamless and Effective Collaboration: By controlling file visibility through custom user roles and permissions, Nexus enhances productivity. Users can collaborate seamlessly with other contributors, teams, and partners, simplifying asset handovers.
Instantly Organize and Discover Assets: The automatic addition of tags and metadata, including colors, faces, and objects, improves asset discoverability. An AI-driven visual search feature provides highly accurate and personalized search results.
Effortless Setup: Nexus offers easy visual content import and integration with existing storage platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox, ensuring a smooth transition.
About Cloudinary
Cloudinary is a leading image and video technology platform that empowers the world's most engaging brands to deliver transformative visual experiences on a global scale. Consisting of a user base of over 1.5 million and serving more than 10,000 esteemed customers, including Bleacher Report, Apartment Therapy, Bombas, NBC, Grubhub, Mediavine, Paul Smith, Minted, and Peloton, Cloudinary is the trusted choice for bringing campaigns, applications, and websites to life. With unrivaled image and video APIs, supported by cutting-edge AI and patented technology, Cloudinary provides brands with a singular source of truth to effectively manage, transform, optimize, and seamlessly deliver visual experiences at scale.
Read More
FINANCE
Nav Technologies, Inc. | September 13, 2023
On September 12, 2023, Nav, a leading fintech company specializing in serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), unveiled its latest offerings, Nav Prime, along with the Nav Prime Card for small businesses.
For Nav, the launch of Nav Prime represents a natural evolution of its financial health platform. Nav distinguishes itself by being the only platform that provides small businesses with a transparent overview of their financing options and pre-qualification insights before they apply. By consolidating credit and financial data from SMBs, Nav aligns their financing eligibility with its network, which comprises over 160 diverse financial products and providers. In this year alone, Nav has facilitated access to financing and funding for more than 100,000 small businesses.
Nav Prime emerges as a fully integrated financial management solution tailored for contemporary small businesses. Covering aspects from cash flow monitoring to business credit reporting, banking, deposits, and business card solutions, Nav Prime empowers businesses to streamline both their financial management and enhancement efforts, all within a single platform.
Furthermore, the introduction of Nav Prime includes an industry-first innovation, the Nav Prime Card, a business credit-building charge card specifically designed for the SMB sector. Notably, the Nav Prime Card boasts no annual fees and does not necessitate a personal guarantee, thereby preserving users' personal credit ratings. This innovative card also reports spending activities to all three major commercial credit bureaus, allowing users to potentially boost their business credit scores by simply utilizing the card for everyday expenditures. Another distinctive feature of the Nav Prime Card is its flexibility in linking to any pre-existing business checking account of the user's choice, including Nav's own. This sets it apart from other corporate card and expense management fintech solutions that have previously targeted the SMB market.
With Nav Prime, Nav has established itself as the singular destination where businesses can enhance their financing eligibility, evaluate the impacts of their actions, and seamlessly access their most advantageous financial options—all within a unified platform. Nav provides invaluable data and insights crucial to a business owner's financial well-being, including their borrowing capacity. For the first time, SMBs gain transparency into their best financing choices and rates, facilitating informed decisions about lenders and funding types that align with their specific business needs.
Greg Ott, Chief Executive Officer at Nav, commented,
Small business owners have been left in the dark in terms of knowing how lenders see their business. Nav Prime and the unique Nav Prime charge card gives owners a new tool to improve their business' financial qualifications by making their everyday transactions help build their business credit score, and ultimately lead to better working capital options.
[Source: PR Newswire]
Historically, the fintech industry has often overlooked small businesses, or they have been catered to solely in favorable, low-interest-rate environments. Recent interest rate hikes have prompted several fintech companies to withdraw abruptly from the small business sector, placing the survival of these Main Street businesses at risk. Many of these businesses possess strong creditworthiness with substantial revenue and cash reserves.
Nav addresses this gap by empowering small business borrowers to view the same information that lenders see before they seek financing opportunities. This not only improves the likelihood of loan approvals but also reduces the risk of negatively impacting their business credit ratings with major commercial credit bureaus, such as Experian and Equifax.
About Nav
Nav is a leading fintech company specializing in serving small and medium-sized businesses. It is uniquely positioned as the sole platform that seamlessly integrates financial and credit data to offer small businesses clear insights, expert guidance, and streamlined access to an extensive portfolio of over 100 diverse financing options. The company holds a remarkable track record of assisting over 2 million small businesses in enhancing their financial health and securing vital funding. It leverages authentic business data to precisely align qualifications, empowering small business proprietors to effortlessly identify the most suitable loans, credit cards, banking solutions, and other essential business services tailored to their precise requirements. Nav's exceptional financial health platform provides an integrated view of cash flow and credit insights alongside personalized financing choices, serving as the exclusive destination where small business owners can ascertain their pre-qualification status before initiating the application process.
Read More