Over 500 Southern California Small Businesses Take First Steps To Accessing More Capital At Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. "Money to Main Street" Event

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Over 500 small business owners from throughout Southern California gathered today in downtown Los Angeles to get educated on a radically changing funding landscape in one of the largest small business financing events ever held. The "Access to Capital: Money to Main Street" event, hosted by Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., the leading provider of credit building and credibility solutions for businesses, was aimed at bridging the funding gap for small businesses and give them the tools to help secure additional financing.

"A recent survey of small businesses by Pepperdine University and Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., showed an astonishing 78% of small businesses having difficulty in securing traditional bank financing," said Jeff Stibel, Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. "With the support of all the financial institutions and participants in today's event, we believe we can help small businesses bridge the funding gap and get them back on the road towards growth and expansion."

Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., with the support of title sponsor Wells Fargo & Co., provided over 500 small business attendees with a full day of panels of leading lenders, investors, small business experts and successful entrepreneurs on both the traditional and alternative funding front. Among the speakers and panel moderators were:

• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
• Bryan Moeller, SVP and Director of Small Business Banking, Wells Fargo, LA/Orange County Region,
• Patrick Freeman, Director of American Express Merchant Financing
• Jane Wells, Business News Reporter for CNBC
• Chance Barnett, Founder & CEO of Crowdfunder
• Levi King, President of Lendio
• Candace Klein, Founder & CEO of SoMoLend
• Marco Lucioni, Vice President of Lending of Opportunity Fund
• Jason Nazar, Founder & CEO of DocStoc
• Kathryn Petralia, Co-Founder & COO of Kabbage
• John Suh, CEO of LegalZoom
• Mark Wilson, President & CEO of eVerifile

A complete list of panelists and speakers is available at www.AccesstoCapital.com.

"Small businesses are the backbone of the Los Angeles economy, but too many of them lack access to the critical capital they need to grow and expand," said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation is stepping up to the plate and helping small businesses get the financing they need to help our economy thrive."

The Access to Capital event featured a Town Square setting where small business owners met one-on-one with over 30 advisors that were on hand. The "Financial District" featured representatives from 11 lenders where each business was paired with a lender, and "Startup Alley" which offered experts from organizations such as Startup California, Indiegogo, SoMoLend and Crowdfunder, all dedicated to helping start-up firms raise capital.  

The "City Hall" district included representatives from the Mayor's Office, LA Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Administration, Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., Latin Business Association, Score and National Association of Women Business Owners. In the "Business District," LegalZoom, Docstoc, Better Business Bureau and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses spent time with attendees and Dun & Bradstreet Credibility provided attendees a free copy of their company's D&B business credit report, a set of D&B scores and ratings which may factor into lenders' credit decisions.

"Our Wells Fargo team is proud to serve as an integral part of today's event, which will empower small businesses with a wealth of information and workshops that are strategically designed to help them succeed financially," said Bryan Moeller, Wells Fargo's Director of Small Business Banking for Greater Los Angeles and Orange County. "To maintain our stance as the top U.S. business lender, it's important that we remain steadfast in our commitment to providing access to capital for small businesses, knowing that this is a key ingredient to rebuilding our communities and our economy. Going into the start of the event, our leadership team was pleased to learn that more than 200 business owners scheduled one-on-one appointments to meet with our bankers – it's definitely a positive indicator of demand and proof that businesses are looking to grow."

According to data collected by the Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index Report and Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., only 33% of respondents attempted to raise external financing in the last six months and of those companies that sought a bank loan, only 35% were successful vs. a 77% success rate for larger businesses, illustrating the steep challenges small businesses face in today's financing market. Even more important was that 41% of those small business owners are having to use personal assets to keep their business running over the past six months, according to the Index report.

For more information on the survey index results, please visit here.

About Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. 

Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. is the leading provider of credit building and credibility solutions for businesses. We help businesses establish their credit with a D&B DUNS® Number, a unique nine-digit identification sequence used by the world's most influential standards-setting organizations and recognized, recommended and often required by global corporations, governments, industry and trade associations.

Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. provides the only real business credit monitoring solution available to companies looking to monitor and impact their own business credit profile. Its leading credit monitoring products are used by tens of thousands of companies interested in protecting their business reputation. The company additionally offers D&B solutions to protect their business risk by tracking the credit and creditworthiness of the companies with which they do business.  Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with offices throughout North America.  For more information, please visit www.DandB.com. 

Contact: Liz Gengl
Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.
Tel: 310.919.2266
E: [email protected]

James Lee
The Lee Strategy Group, Inc.
Tel: 424.229.2753
E: [email protected]

SOURCE Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.