Latino entrepreneurs launching new businesses

After 22 years at Apple ending as a project manager, Margie Sanchez decided to forge her own Steve Jobs experience, launching a company called California Solar Screens.Sanchez believes the San Jose company she founded in 2009, which manufactures and installs window screens that block sunlight and heat to conserve energy in summer and winter, can grow from a few part-time and contract employees to become "humongous."

"It's possible, and it's doable, and I have every aspiration for growth," she said.Sanchez has joined a wave of Latino entrepreneurs who launched nearly 700,000 new businesses in recent years, including about 17,000 in the Bay Area. According to new data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau, the number of new Latino-owned businesses grew at more than double the rate of all new U.S. businesses from 2002 to 2007.Latino-owned businesses remain significantly smaller than the average U.S. firm in terms of employees and gross receipts, and many have been battered by the recession that began in 2007.

But officials say the 44 percent gain in the number of Latino firms through the middle of the past decade, compared with 18 percent growth for all companies, augurs well for the potential contribution Latino entrepreneurs can make to the nation's tax and employment bases.

"I think what you're seeing is a true maturing of the Hispanic community, relative to entrepreneurism," David Hinson, national director of the Minority Business Development Agency, told reporters as the Census Bureau released the data.As the nation's largest and most diverse state, California has the most Latino-owned companies in the nation, with 566,567, one-quarter of the nation's 2.3 million Latino-owned firms.

About 16.5 percent of California businesses are owned by Latinos, a rate that trails only New Mexico, Florida and Texas. Those numbers include companies with employees, as well as sole proprietors.Among the nation's largest metro areas, only Los Angeles, New York and Houston led the Bay Area in both the number of Latino-owned firms and their total gross receipts. While the number of Latino-owned firms in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland metro area grew by 32 percent from 2002 to 2007, some Bay Area counties, including Contra Costa County with a 42 percent jump, grew even faster. read more
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