Gov. Ned Lamont came to New Haven Wednesday afternoon to announce the launch of an online platform to help people starting businesses in the state and attract businesses fleeing New York — as Connecticut gets its “mojo back.”
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
Lamont (pictured) and a team of state and local officials announced the launch at a press conference at the Holberton tech job-training school in the District New Haven innovation complex on James Street.
The new website guides business founders through the process of creating their business with tips and resources on selecting locations, market research, hiring employees and step-by-step walk-throughs of how to register and license businesses.
It allows business owners to keep track of their progress by creating accounts and supplying links for forms from the Department of Revenue Services and Department of Labor and for consumer protection permits. The website also allows business founders or anyone else with questions to access a concierge service and get guidance from real people.
Lamont spoke about using the website to expand entrepreneurship and new businesses in Connecticut as well as to attract other established businesses to the state. “We’ve always been a great entrepreneurial state. We lost a little bit of our mojo, but now we’re getting it back!”
State Chief Operating Officer Josh Geballe said the website has been in the works for just about a year. He estimated it will reduce the amount of time new business founders have to invest in the starting process by over 90 percent. Geballe also said it will save business founders thousands of dollars in accountants and lawyers hired to help them get through the jumbles of research, forms, and information.
“One of our first initiatives, in line with the governor’s vision, was to try to attack this patchwork of websites, rules, regulations, and confusing requirements that businesses have to navigate to be able to do business in Connecticut and replace all of that with one modern, clear and actually helpful website” Geballe said.
Geballe (pictured) said despite the Covid-19 pandemic slamming many small businesses nationwide, Connecticut has had an abundance of residents creating new businesses. According to Geballe, between March and June, 236 new businesses for personal services and over 300 residential remodeling businesses sprouted across the state. Additionally, some 200 professional services — including marketing, consulting, and accounting and 171 e‑commerce businesses — launched in Connecticut during the pandemic.
Amber Cancelliere is one of the 236 new personal services business owners. In April, Cancelliere opened a salon called Hair by Amber, which travels directly to clients’ homes for a safer cut during the pandemic. “I recognized a need for a safer option rather than going into a brick and mortar hair salon,” she said.
Cancelliere said it took her weeks to go through all the research, paperwork, and proper channels to open her Essex-based business. Luckily, Cancelliere had family members and friends who had opened small businesses before and were able to guide her. “With their help and the help of the internet, I was able to navigate that whole not-so-user-friendly process,” she said.
Soon after launching Hair by Amber, Cancelliere (pictured) was contacted by the business.ct.gov team for insights on her experience. As a mother of two young kids and a husband who works full time, she found one of the most challenging pieces was scheduling time to get research done and work with specific government departments during business hours.
Cancelliere also found it difficult just keeping track of next steps in the process. “I’m excited that business.ct.gov has put together this process for new business owners to save everyone some valuable time and ensure this process is completed correctly. I look forward to using this new platform in the future as I continue to conduct business in Connecticut,” she said.
Typically, the first virtual stop for new business owners includes visiting the Connecticut Secretary of State’s website. Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s office handles all filings for corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability corporations, and not-for-profits.
Merrill (pictured) said she is proud of the new website and how it clearly guides business founders through every agency’s requirements: “This is so much more than a website- this is a comprehensive plan to bring together multiple agencies to collaborate in having a single experience for every customer. I don’t think any other state has been able to accomplish this.”
“Now of course, more than ever. people are demanding a way to interact online effectively, and that’s what we’re going to be able to offer here in Connecticut for the first time” Merrill added.
Holberton School Executive Director A.M. (Al) Bhatt (pictured), who oversees the school and future education, art, and leadership initiatives at District New Haven, touched on the importance of integrating computer science into government processes. “The discipline of finance became central to any career over the last 30 or 40 years. That’s what computer science is now. Fundamentals of coding and computer science are central to any discipline going forward,” he said.
He said with Covid-19, he hopes Connecticut’s shifts to telelearning, telehealth, and telecommuting will encourage younger folks to stay or come to the state. “Hopefully all this telecommuting reminds all you hip, young millennials that you don’t necessarily need to be on that train to New York City every day- maybe once or twice a week is good enough- the rest of the time you can do it here. There’s a lot of amazing new energy behind the state of Connecticut.”
Lamont and Geballe said their phones have been “ringing off the hook” with people looking to move to Connecticut and that “where people go, where talent goes, businesses are soon to follow. Either we start them up right here or they come into the state and we had to make it easier to navigate the labyrinth of all the regulations and permits necessary to go through.”
The governor said the website is essential to eliminating stagnant government bureaucracy by putting everything business founders need in one place. “I’ve always said our Connecticut government has a bad case of the slows, and we gotta do everything we can to speed things up.”
Watch the full press conference below:
If you want to get your mojo back, reopen the parts of the economy that can be opened. Allow housing providers to evict problematic tenants. On Monday, a housing provider was decapitated by a tenant. He had previously called police and said that he had been threatened but because of the governors they were unable to do anything. You need to reopen the court system. You are killing people.