Revby
Resource Guide

Ideas Worth Sharing

A Resource Guide for Small Business Support Professionals

At Revby, we spend our days working alongside economic development organizations, entrepreneurial support organizations, municipalities, and other partners helping small businesses build stronger, more sustainable companies.

That work constantly exposes us to new ideas, research, tools, and perspectives on what it takes to support entrepreneurs well. We created this guide to bring some of those resources together in one place.

5 Books

Books Worth Reading

Sometimes the best ideas for improving small business support come from stepping outside the day-to-day work. These books offer useful perspectives on entrepreneurial ecosystems, community development, coaching, inclusive entrepreneurship, and the role locally owned businesses play in stronger communities.

Pull a book off the shelf to see why it made the list.

Book cover

The Startup Community Way

Brad Feld & Ian Hathaway

Explore the Book

What it is

A systems-based look at how entrepreneurial ecosystems actually develop and why they cannot simply be created by copying another community's programs.

Why it’s worth your time

For EDO and ESO professionals, the biggest takeaway is that entrepreneurship support is an ecosystem, not a collection of isolated services. The book offers a useful framework for thinking about collaboration, community leadership, experimentation, and the role support organizations can play without trying to control the system.

6 Reports

Reports Worth Saving

Good program design starts with understanding what business owners are actually experiencing. These reports provide useful data and examples that can help small business support organizations make more informed decisions about programming, outreach, capital access, and technical assistance.

Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey

2026 Report on Employer Firms

A national look at the performance, challenges, financing needs, credit experiences, and expectations of small employer firms based on the Federal Reserve's annual Small Business Credit Survey.

Why it’s worth your time

It is one of the best sources available for grounding small business programming in current owner experiences rather than assumptions. The findings can help EDOs and ESOs think more critically about what businesses are facing and where support may be most valuable.

≈ 40 minView the Report
Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey

2026 Chartbook on Nonemployer Firms

A focused look at businesses with no employees beyond the owner or owners, including their profitability, financing behavior, challenges, and plans for growth.

Why it’s worth your time

Solopreneurs and microbusinesses often represent a significant share of the businesses served through public small business programs, yet their needs can look very different from those of larger firms. This report helps practitioners understand those differences.

≈ 25 minView the Report
U.S. Department of the Treasury

SSBCI Technical Assistance Program Summaries

A state-by-state look at how jurisdictions are designing and delivering SSBCI-funded technical assistance, including program structures, service providers, delivery methods, and areas of support.

Why it’s worth your time

For anyone designing or overseeing a small business TA program, this is essentially a national idea bank. It provides concrete examples of how other jurisdictions are approaching financial advisory services, capital readiness, one-on-one advising, cohorts, partnerships, outreach, and other elements of program delivery.

≈ 1 hrExplore the Program Summaries
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

National Report on Early-Stage Entrepreneurship in the United States: 2025

A national snapshot of entrepreneurial activity covering new entrepreneurs, opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, startup job creation, and early business survival.

Why it’s worth your time

Local entrepreneurship programs operate within larger economic and demographic trends. This report provides useful context for understanding how new business creation is changing nationally and gives EDOs a benchmark against which to think about activity in their own communities.

≈ 30 minView the Report
Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC)

AI in Business: How Small Business Owners Are Learning, Using, and Navigating Challenges with AI Tools

Research based on a national survey of more than 3,700 small business owners examining how businesses are using AI, what barriers they face, and how owners want to learn about these technologies.

Why it’s worth your time

AI programming for small businesses should be based on what owners actually need, not simply on the fact that AI is a hot topic. The report offers particularly useful insight for organizations deciding what AI-related training or technical assistance to provide and how to deliver it.

≈ 30 minView the Report
Main Street America

Spring 2026 Small Business Survey

Research based on responses from more than 2,400 small business owners examining business confidence, profitability, economic pressures, and evolving needs in Main Street communities.

Why it’s worth your time

The survey brings a Main Street and microbusiness perspective to the conversation. It is particularly useful for local economic developers working with independent businesses in downtowns, neighborhood commercial districts, and other place-based environments.

≈ 10 minRead the Findings
4 Podcasts

Podcasts Worth Listening To

Sometimes the most useful ideas come from hearing practitioners talk candidly about what worked, what did not, and what they learned along the way. These episodes speak directly to the realities of entrepreneurship-led economic development and small business program delivery.

  1. Building a Technical Assistance Program That Works (and Proves It)

    Breaking Down Barriers — Economic Impact Catalyst

    A practical discussion about designing TA programs, structuring intake, setting advisor expectations, building referral systems, reaching entrepreneurs, and tracking outcomes.

    Why listen: This episode gets unusually close to the operational questions EDOs and ESOs face every day. It also addresses both sides of successful TA: delivering a good experience for business owners and producing the impact data funders and sponsoring organizations need.

    ≈ 45 min Listen

  2. Stop Treating Entrepreneurship Like a Side Project

    Econ Dev Show — with Peter McGee

    A conversation about why entrepreneurship support is frequently included in economic development strategies but often receives less structure, attention, and measurement than other economic development functions.

    Why listen: The episode makes a compelling case for treating entrepreneurship as an actual economic development program—not simply a referral function. It also explores coaching, business fundamentals, local branding, and why outcomes matter more than counting meetings.

    ≈ 40 min Listen

  3. The Art of Understanding Local Markets

    Main Street Business Insights

    An episode about interpreting local market data and combining quantitative information with a deeper understanding of community context.

    Why listen: Good small business strategies cannot be built from data alone. This conversation offers a useful reminder that market analysis works best when it combines numbers with local knowledge about customers, businesses, places, and community dynamics.

    ≈ 30 min Listen

  4. Smaller Business Week: Why Microbusinesses Matter

    Develop This! Economic and Community Development

    A conversation about solopreneurs, freelancers, makers, home-based firms, side businesses, pop-ups, and other enterprises that frequently fall outside traditional economic development definitions of business growth.

    Why listen: Many small business programs serve exactly these entrepreneurs. The episode challenges practitioners to think more broadly about what business success and economic contribution look like when job creation or a physical storefront may not be the immediate goal.

    ≈ 45 min Listen
5 Videos

Videos Worth Watching

These resources cover some of the bigger questions behind small business support: how the field is changing, how entrepreneurs experience support, how we improve access to capital, and how we create more intentional programs and spaces for learning.

The Changing Role of Small Business Ownership

Aspen Institute · Watch on aspeninstitute.org

Why it’s worth your time

It provides a useful future-facing perspective for organizations designing programs today for businesses that will be operating in a very different environment tomorrow.

Bridging the Capital Access Gap

ICIC + LISC · Playlist · 17 modules · See all 17 modules on icic.org

Why it’s worth your time

Capital readiness is about much more than helping someone complete a loan application. This resource gives TA providers a deeper understanding of how lenders make decisions and provides practical tools for helping business owners become better prepared to navigate financing.

Want to Help Someone? Shut Up and Listen!

Ernesto Sirolli · Watch on TED.com

Why it’s worth your time

The talk is more than a decade old, but the message remains highly relevant to technical assistance. Effective support starts with the entrepreneur—not with a predefined solution, curriculum, or assumption about what is best for them.

3 Steps to Turn Everyday Get-Togethers into Transformative Gatherings

Priya Parker · Watch on TED.com

Why it’s worth your time

EDOs and ESOs bring people together constantly—through workshops, cohorts, networking events, peer groups, stakeholder meetings, and community convenings. Parker offers a useful lens for making those experiences more purposeful and valuable.

How Entrepreneurs Can Unlock Their Full Potential

Jay Bailey · Watch on TED.com

Why it’s worth your time

Bailey brings the entrepreneur-support conversation back to something programs can easily lose sight of: talent is widely distributed, but access and belonging are not. That is an important perspective for organizations working to build more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems.

4 Voices

Voices Worth Following

Not every useful resource needs to be a long report or a book. These accounts regularly surface research, examples, ideas, tools, and stories that can help small business support professionals stay connected to what is happening across the field.

Project for Public Spaces

Instagram — @pps_placemaking

A strong visual source for placemaking, public markets, community engagement, downtown activity, public space, and the ways people interact with the places where local economic activity happens. It adds a useful place-based perspective to the guide.

Follow

Fed Communities

LinkedIn

Fed Communities regularly surfaces Federal Reserve research, events, data, and perspectives on small business, credit access, economic inclusion, rural communities, workforce issues, Native communities, and community development. It is a good way to encounter useful Fed research without having to constantly search for it.

Follow

Economic Impact Catalyst

LinkedIn

EIC sits very close to the day-to-day work of entrepreneurship-led economic development. Its content regularly touches on ecosystem building, TA program delivery, referrals, program management, data, impact measurement, and the infrastructure organizations use to support entrepreneurs.

Follow

Small Business Majority

LinkedIn

A useful source for staying connected to what small business owners are experiencing, particularly around access to capital, workforce issues, operating conditions, policy changes, and the needs of diverse entrepreneurs and microbusinesses.

Follow
5 Peer Picks

What Your Peers Are Recommending

We also asked economic development and entrepreneurial support professionals who work directly with small businesses what content has influenced how they approach their work. Here’s what they recommended.

This episode offers a practical look at how entrepreneurship programs can be designed around the real needs of a community, rather than simply filling seats or meeting funding requirements. Its focus on intentional program design, the whole entrepreneur, relationship-building, and measuring outcomes makes it especially useful for anyone working to build a stronger and more responsive small business support ecosystem.
Michael AparicioFounder & CEO, Revby
Podcast

Fill the Gap, Not the Seats: Building High-Impact Cohort Programs with Karen Collins of LAUNCH Chattanooga

Breaking Down Barriers PodcastListen to the Episode
Work with Revby

Keep the Conversation Going

The best resources are rarely valuable because they give us every answer. They are valuable because they make us reconsider a question, try something differently, or see the people and communities we serve from another perspective.

We hope something in this guide does that for you.

If your organization is thinking about how to strengthen its small business technical assistance, improve program outcomes, expand access to capital, or better support the entrepreneurs in your community, we’d welcome the conversation.

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