You’re in luck. Other aspiring entrepreneurs have trod the ground you seek to walk on, and they are willing to share their insight. Check out these key startup resources:

Fedmarket.com - Home to a variety of free resources and information, including weekly newsletters on General Services Administration schedules, proposal writing and federal sales, Fedmarket.com makes the federal contracting landscape easier to navigate. For a fee, you can access products that provide more in-depth assistance with preparing proposals and filing applications. The site also organizes nationwide seminars on topics ranging from contracting to GSA schedules.

EZMatch.com - This matchmaking service might get a little personal, but it’s all in an effort to match you with the right franchise opportunity. Fill out a comprehensive online questionnaire and receive a scientifically validated assessment, including a list of franchises that are a good fit based on financial, geographic, social and psychological factors. If you’re thinking of going the franchising route, this might help get you started down the right path.

PolicyMap - Register for free online and gain access to geographic data related to demographics, real estate, crime, money and income, jobs, education, energy, and public investments. For $200 per month or $2,000 per year, you can upload your own data, compare it to other data analytics, gain insight to future investments, and so on.

Click here to read this article on The Entrepreneur which appear in June 2009.

Policy Map

Most people are familiar with the map to show roads, schools, parks. This website display maps to show demographics and policies. It is called The Policy Map.

From the website, it says:

PolicyMap is a revolutionary, easy, new way to explore geographic data through maps, tables and reports.

No matter you are doing your business, or you are just interested in the spatial distribution of policy changes and demography, this site is for you. You will be surprised at how much more information and knowledge you can get from this site. And that will help you make smart decision.

Click here to read this article by Leiyungjon which on June 23, 2009.

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / May 12, 2009

Databases. They’re not just for those with specialized skills anymore. Want to know what kinds of insights into the world everyday people can find when the right tools are available to process plenty of data? Check out this example below.

One year ago we wrote about a fascinating service called PolicyMap, a website where users can view more than 4000 different data sets laid out on a map down to the city street level. I found which parts of my neighborhood donated more money to John McCain than to Barack Obama, and vice versa. Today PolicyMap launched a new feature for subscribers that allows up to three points of data to be cross-referenced. You may or may not be interested in subscribing to PolicyMap, but anyone can see from the screencast below just how much potential technologies like this have.

There’s a button to view this video full screen in the bottom-right corner of the player.

This is pretty interesting stuff, is it not? The ability to cross-reference different sets of data with factors like geographic location is really exciting. Extrapolate from this, if you will, by imagining what kind of things could be made possible if programmatic access to data from Facebook could be layered into systems like this. Or any other large data set that’s hording it. Anonymous aggregate data made available to developers who can build interfaces that allow end users to analyze that data is likely to be an even more important resource in the near future than it is today.

Click here to read this article by the Marshal Kirkpatrick which appeared on ReadWriteWeb on May 12, 2009.

TRF’s PolicyMap Unveils Version 2.0

Upgraded Online Mapping Site Lets Users Layer and Compare Data

(Philadelphia) May 11, 2009 – TRF’s PolicyMap (www.policymap.com) today unveiled version 2.0. The newest version of this revolutionary website provides quick and flexible analysis of neighborhood-level data nationwide. At subscribers’ fingertips now are answers to questions relevant to job training (e.g. Where are neighborhoods with low educational attainment rates and low household incomes, but close to mass transit?), housing (e.g. Where are high poverty areas in close proximity to a mass transit stop and in good school districts?), energy (e.g. Where are stable communities with high utility costs, potentially most in need of home weatherization assistance?) and more.

With PolicyMap 2.0, those involved in deciding where and how to spend unprecedented stimulus dollars or foundations deciding how to allocate limited resources have a quick and flexible tool for searching for those neighborhoods where intervention could matter most.

“With the introduction of PolicyMap Analytics, TRF’s PolicyMap can reshape how policymakers use data and maps to understand the markets in which they work,” said Jeremy Nowak, President of TRF. “PolicyMap is the simple, fast, and efficient platform that many are demanding to guide policy decisions and help strategically allocate resources.”

PolicyMap subscribers can find those neighborhoods that meet up to three criteria from more than 4,000 data indicators related to demographics, real estate markets, education, employment, money and income, crime, energy, and public investments. TRF aggregates data from a variety of public and private sources including U.S. Census, Claritas, FBI, IRS, the Postal Service, and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Additional PolicyMap 2.0 functionality lets users rank data, download public datasets and provides for an extraordinary level of
customization.

“PolicyMap offers tools both for us as the investor and for the organizations that we support, offering both of us the detailed neighborhood data to plan for real impact,” said Lois Greco, Senior Vice President and Evaluation Officer, Wachovia Regional Foundation.

Nearly 150,000 people have used PolicyMap since the site launched just under a year ago. To date, PolicyMap has more than 11,000 registered users. Its varied subscribers include the Federal Reserve of Philadelphia, foundations such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, public agencies including the New Jersey Housing Mortgage Finance Agency, private entities like Comcast as well as nonprofit community organizations nationwide. PolicyMap is a 2009 finalist for CNET’s Webware100 award.

About TRF’s PolicyMap

PolicyMap is an online mapping tool that makes it quick and easy to gather and analyze geocentric information. PolicyMap is a service of The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a not-for-profit leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. TRF developed PolicyMap to empower decision makers with better access to credible market and demographic data. To see how PolicyMap Analytics works, check out tutorial address. To learn more about PolicyMap, visit www.policymap.com.  To learn more about TRF, visit www.trfund.com.

Submitted by Dan U-A on Wed, 04/01/2009 - 2:07pm.

PolicyMap, the awesome mapping and data tool from my buddies in the Policy Group at the The Reinvestment Fund is up for a CNET Webware 100 Award . Basically, it is up for an award for cool internet stuff.

PolicyMap is a pretty ridiculously cool tool (and great way to procrastinate) that can help us all use a little more data in our arguments, and all of a sudden acquire GIS mapping skills that we would never have otherwise. (And for those people in government, in the non-profit world, doing policy stuff, etc., it can be incredibly useful.)

If you haven’t seen it in action yet, check it out. And then go vote. Agreed? Super.

(I used to work for TRF and I am, without question, incredibly biased. But, even so, its a good kind of bias, you know what I mean?)

Click here to read this article by the Dan which appeared on Young Philly Politics on April 1, 2009.

(Philadelphia) March 19, 2009- Airing tonight on ABC News is an interview with Jeremy Nowak, CEO and President of The Reinvestment Fund regarding the geography of the recession. ABC News was drawn to the employment data from TRF’s demographic data and mapping tool www.policymap.com that BusinessWeek had used to write several articles in the past few months on the same topic.

Where is the recession hitting hardest? Where might there be best opportunities? Why?

BusinessWeek used PolicyMap’s data and geographic information system to consider cities across the country that had high concentrations of jobs in “safe” industries, such as: healthcare, education, law, energy and the government. Based on this indicator, it posited that cities such as Arlington, VA; Washington, D.C.; Durham, NC; Madison, WI; Boston, MA; Pittsburgh, PA; Baltimore, MD; Baton Rouge, LA; New Orleans, LA; and Philadelphia, PA may be more recession-proof.

“We developed PolicyMap to help policymakers and others – including reporters – to have the ability to quickly access important, sometimes hard-to-understand data,” said Nowak.

Jeremy Nowak’s interview is being distributed by ABC News tonight. The original BusinessWeek.com articles, including a sideshow of all 20 cities, can be found at PolicyMap’s blog (http://blog.policymap.com/?p=1586) or at businessweek.com.

About PolicyMap

PolicyMap is an online mapping tool that makes it quick and easy to gather and analyze geocentric information such as demographics, real estate, crime statistics and more. PolicyMap is a service of The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a not-for-profit leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. TRF developed PolicyMap to empower decision makers with better access to credible market and demographic data. PolicyMap can be found online at www.policymap.com. To learn more abut TRF, visit www.trfund.com.

PolicyMap is a new website that allows visitors to search for federally-funded organizations in their area. It also allows people to get basic statistics, such as demographic, educational, and economic information. The interactive map allows you to easily focus in on areas of interest. Use the tabs at the top to choose what type of information you want to see.

Also note: when you are looking at the statistical map, the source of the data (i.e., United States Census Bureau) is listed on the left-hand side of the screen.

Click here to read this article by the Grafton Library which appeared on Your Dose of MSG on March 16, 2009.

Check out PolicyMap.com, a great resource for finding the location of federally funded institutes nationwide, like public housing, schools, as well as statistics from the census and other data sources.  While they do offer a premium service with more features (mostly not useful), the basic service will do a lot for you.  You can get maps, reports, and tables of data on a variety of factors.  You can layer the different data one on top of the other to correlate things like the location of schools vs. household income, or poverty levels correlated with infant mortality.  You can view things so easily, the site truly did amaze me when I started clicking around.  You can zoom in and out of the map, change data parameters, or remove choices all with a click.  It’s very easy to use, data-rich, and generally awesome.  See the example below, and please note that clearly there are not a lot of people of Asian descent where I live.

Click Here to read the full article.
This article by Sarah Houghton-Jan on Librarian in Black on Tuesday March 10th, 2009.

PolicyMap Launches Affordable E-Resource for Students

Online Mapping Tool Lets University Students Utilize

Professional-Grade Data at an Accessible Student Rate

(Philadelphia) February 10, 2009 – TRF’s PolicyMap.com today announced that it is opening up its vast wealth of online market and demographic data to university students at a deeply discounted rate. Students now have easy, affordable access to the same professional-grade data utilized by thousands of policymakers and professionals across the nation. The electronic resource is intended to aid scholarly research and support class discussions through the application of credible data that was previously scattered across the web or unavailable for students.