Cobb is among the leadering counties in Georgia for economic growth, business success, and diverse industries. Small businesses are a central economic driver in the county’s overall fiscal health and vitality. Thanks to a plethora of resources and its business-friendly environment, Cobb County is quickly becoming a hub for innovation and entrepreneurial talent.
Every great business begins with a great idea. However, starting a business requires planning, making important financial decisions, and ensuring sound legal structures are in place. The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) provides a helpful Ten Step Checklist for prospective business owners to lay the groundwork for future success. More detailed instructions can also be found in the UGA Small Business Development Center’s Start-Up Guide.
Funding can be found from several sources – personal financing, traditional lending, and grant assistance. However, accessing this funding can be difficult, especially for minority entrepreneurs. Several organizations, including the SBA’s Lender Match, ACE, and LISC Atlanta connect young businesses with interested lenders and provide specialized lending services for eligible companies.
A business plan is strongly encouraged for startups and young businesses. It serves as the roadmap for your business, identifies your company goals, and can help you navigate unforeseen circumstances. If you need to raise capital, a business plan is required for loan applications and grant assistance. The US Chamber of Commerce’s Definitive Guide to Writing a Startup Business Plan covers all the components of a successful business plan and why startups have unique business plan needs.
You do not have to register your business with the state unless you are planning to incorporate, become a specific legal entity, or plan to do business with the state. If your company is interested in becoming a registered vendor, you will need to register with the Georgia Corporations Division. Additional guidance on requirements for registration, licensing, and tax information can be found in the state’s First Stop Business Guide.
The UGA Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Kennesaw State provides a full suite of resources for new entrepreneurs and experienced business owners, including no-cost business consulting and information on securing business loans.
For businesses interested in one-on-one guidance, SCORE is a free mentoring service that provides resources and expertise to assist small businesses in achieving their goals. In addition to mentorship, SCORE also hosts low-cost workshops and provides free business tools and templates.
SelectCobb’s goal is to connect startups with helpful resources and opportunities to start and grow their businesses. Interested individuals can connect with our Small Business & Entrepreneurship Initiatives Manager, Caroline Knowles at [email protected] or (770) 859-2353.
Cobb County Government offers entrepreneurs, small business owners, and economic development professionals assistance with startups, expansions, and relocations. For more information on this service, contact the Business Concierge Team at [email protected] or (770) 528-2018.
We’re making it easy for businesses to post their open positions or internship opportunities to find the best candidates right here in Cobb County.
This portal also provides our Cobb community members access to local job opportunities to assist them in finding a new career opportunity.
The HatchBridge Incubator is a comprehensive ecosystem bridging programs, services, resources, and co-working and shared spaces to foster innovation, entrepreneurship, economic development, and experimental learning. Available as a community resource, regardless of Kennesaw State affiliation, HatchBridge seeks to pair bright minds with innovators and entrepreneurs to answer questions, find resources, and build capabilities.
Katie Scott
Economic Development Coordinator
Contact Katie Scott for help with small business resources and events.
We have experts at the ready to help answer any questions you may have about doing business in Cobb.
1100 Circle 75 Pkwy.
Suite 1000
Atlanta, GA 30339
© 2023 SelectCobb. All Rights Reserved.
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email [email protected]
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to [email protected].