New York Times

Foursquare, a location-based social network, is rolling out new tools that will give businesses more information about their customers and allow them to target special offers.

Local governments have tried a variety of approaches, like wage subsidies and grants, to help small businesses start or stay alive.

EPC Cigar is focusing on social media to promote the new company and its E. P. Carrillo brand, while building on the family’s cigar-making legacy.

Can Thinking Caps Tutoring of Manhattan, which employs 30 tutors and serves 300 students annually, expand while maintaining the quality of its services?

Focusing on job creation in New Hampshire on Tuesday, President Obama promoted his $30 billion lending plan.

Advisory boards should be small and include people who are trusted and who offer complementary skills, experts say.

Barbara Wright’s experience with a Small Business Administration loan shows that federal help in the current financial climate does not always do what a small-business owner expects.

An adviser to small businesses offers hard-edged solutions to problems faced by most entrepreneurs.

Google is taking on the Yellow Pages by courting small businesses. A new service, to highlight listings, costs only $25 a month.

A Florida-based entrepreneur had the opportunity to ask President Obama a question that many others have wanted to ask.

Preparing a business for sale has a lot in common with starting it in the first place: The more you prepare, the more successful the outcome is likely to be.

A former doctor’s effort to help small family farms in the Northeast stay in business by marketing and distributing their milk on their own.

Dianne Fuller Doherty, who advises entrepreneurs and works to create jobs, says that “as long as I am doing something of value, why not continue doing it?”

The government has made changes in the Troubled Asset Relief Program to get more small-business lenders to sign up.

There were 18 tech I.P.O.’s in the last two years, versus 143 in the two years prior. Is it more than the recession holding them back?

For businesses and residents, the lack of a bank is an inconvenience, but it is also a problem that officials say has stunted the business community there.

A small town in Pennsylvania Dutch country is home to small businesses that support musicians’ tours, as well as makers of mousetraps, candy and pretzels.

As traditional banks have spurned small businesses, many have turned to firms that provide a relatively expensive alternative: purchase-order financing.

The plan would give companies a tax credit of up to $5,000 for each new hire and reimburse them for Social Security taxes if they expand their payrolls.

Venture capitalists invested 37 percent less money and made 30 percent fewer deals last year than in 2008.