The city of Vancouver and local organizations are about to launch their own version of a startup: a website that caters to the information needs of entrepreneurs and small-business owners looking for advice on how to grow and prosper.

The website, set to launch Jan. 23, will be a collaborative effort among the city and 12 organizations, mostly government services and nonprofit agencies. A beta version of the site, now accessible at http://www.vancouverbusinessresource.org, is an eye-catching, easy-to-use guide to community resources available to small businesses across the startup and early growth spectrum. The site’s tagline describes the foundational philosophy of its developers: “Where SW Washington businesses go to grow.”

Partners include SCORE, the Small Business Administration, and Small Business Development Center assistance programs; job training programs Southwest Washington Workforce Development Center and Work Source Washington; higher education institutions Clark College and Washington State University Vancouver; the civic organizations Vancouver’s Downtown Association and the Greater Vancouver

Chamber of Commerce; and the Fort Vancouver Library District.

Other sponsors are Columbia Credit Union, which funded website design, and the Vancouver Business Journal, which will manage an events calendar on the site.

The website is an outgrowth of two forces, says Jan Harte, a management specialist at the Small Business Development Center and center director for Clark and Skamania counties. More people are asking for help as they search for new ways to make a living in a punishing economy, she says. But many of the assistance organizations have faced cutbacks of their own even as the need for their services rises, she says.

“We started to find a common thread that everybody was looking for answers and would call everybody,” says Harte, who has worked nearly two decades as a small-business adviser. “There was a lot of unnecessary effort.”

The site is built around bright photographs and a bright green map of Washington with a star and bright sunbursts radiating from Clark County. Information about business development is organized in the categories “Starting,” “Maintaining,” Expanding,” and “Inventing.” Business owners can measure how they fare against marketplace competition by plugging revenue and salary figures into a program that shows how their companies measure against the average for their industry. To lighten things up, the website also offers inspirational tidbits and reading recommendations.

The site’s developers say they aren’t aiming to create a new program that will require staff and government funding, but rather to provide basic answers to commonly asked questions. Over time, they want to enliven the site with business success stories, links to news articles or other organizations in the universe of job and business development.

“We don’t want to create new content,” says Alisa Pyszka, city of Vancouver business development manager and a leader in developing the site. But Pyszka and others want the site to be inspiring and fun, and to offer an encouraging message to those who are taking the personal and financial risk of launching a small business.

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