Karen G. Mills of Harvard Business School on the state of U.S. small business

Despite the challenges and the obvious risk of failure, Americans are starting small businesses in record numbers. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well but the difference today is that the tools have become so much better. And they are going to continue to improve, particularly as small business owners start taking advantage of the latest AI tools.

My guest today on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Karen G. Mills. She is a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School, and she was the head of the Small Business Administration under President Obama from 2009 until 2013. She was first on the show back in 2015 and again when she wrote the first edition of her book, Fintech Small Business and the American Dream, back in 2019. She has now published a second edition that includes a deep analysis of the changes that the pandemic and the PPP had on the American small business landscape. She is very optimistic on American small business and thinks we are on the cusp of reaching small business utopia.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What has changed since Karen wrote the first edition of her book in 2019.
• The three layers of complexity that prevented the predicted changes from happening as fast as expected.
• Why she decided to write a second edition.
• Why the narrative about PPP fraud was not accurate.
• What fintech lenders did that traditional banks would not do during that time.
• The analysis they did to demonstrate the success of PPP.
• How the SBA performed in administering the PPP.
• Karen's take on the state of community banks and small business lending.
• Why she thinks big tech is not going to dominate small business lending.
• Who the winners are going to be.
• Why small business lending is one of the biggest opportunities out there.
• Her vision for smart regulation of small business lending.
• What it will take to get to small business utopia.
• Why she is optimistic about the future of U.S. small business.

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