New online trading biz helps put Big Easy in 'start-up mode'
Instead, he went with an unlikely choice: New Orleans. Using $1 million of their own cash, Perkin and partner Justin Brownhill this summer set up the New Orleans Exchange, a virtual marketplace for companies that buy and sell accounts receivable, invoices and other assets used as collateral for business loans.
Their reasons: comparatively low rents, low salaries and a steady stream of qualified graduates from local universities, such as Tulane and Loyola. The city's rebuilding fervor was also a hook, Perkin, 36, said.
"The whole city is in start-up mode," he said. "You walk to work, and you hear hammers and drills all the way. And you're thinking, 'They're building the city, I'm building the business.' The entire experience lends itself to start-ups."
While more than 4,000 businesses in New Orleans and surrounding parishes scattered or closed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, firms are now moving in, particularly in the media and Internet-technology fields. Nearly all the 420 member companies of the Louisiana Technology Council fled after the storm, said Mark Lewis, the council's president. But since Katrina, the non-profit group has signed 340 members, a quarter of which are new, he said.
news source :http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/2007-08-20-new-orleans-tech_N.htm
