I am going to present several ideas, not all of which may be perfect for her situation, but which are generally options for ecoentrepreneurs. Please comment on this post if you have additional ideas or questions about financing a green startup.

This will be a relatively long post, so here is a summary of potential sources of cash for green businesses:

• SBA loans
• Social-venture venture capital funds
• Friends-and-Family financing
• Partnering with a nonprofit organization

Another option, which would not work for this inventor, would be to bootstrap a company, as I described in a previous post.

And another option that is off the table is licensing: This inventor looked into licensing the product to a larger company, which would put up the money for both production and marketing and would then pay the inventor a licensing fee, presumably based on the volume of sales. The downside of the arrangement would be a loss of control over the production and marketing, as well as the fact that the company who is willing to license the product would have the production done in China. Because the inventor lives in upstate New York, where there is significant unemployment, the inventor wants to find some way to raise the money to manufacture the product in a factory within her community.

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