BLACKS GET SHARE OF TECH CAPITAL.

Byline: Michael White Associated Press 

On the day his son was born, Ron Anderson witnessed a second birth as well: an entrepreneurial spirit that drove him from a secure corporate job into the growing ranks of African-American business owners who see a future in the world of high technology.

Nine years later, Anderson, 38, is president of the Demand & Supply Fulfillment Center, a 150-member marketing cooperative whose members include small computer manufacturing, Internet service and DVD production companies, as well as more traditional businesses.

``The idea was formed by the birth of a child,'' Anderson said Thursday as he manned his company's booth at the California African-American Business Summit '99 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. ``My son was born, and I started thinking about ways I could put some people to work.''

Although color barriers continue to frustrate minority entrepreneurs, Anderson and others attending the conference are convinced times have never been better for African-Americans to get into business. In doing so, they are targeting higher-profit industries such as information technology, observers say.

``Like other people, we're looking at technology, telecommunications. We're looking at areas that are growing,'' said Patricia A. Means, publisher of Turning Point magazine, sponsor of the three-day summit that ends today.

As they do so, African-Americans also are finding it necessary to become more sophisticated about marketing, venture capital and partnering. The 400 or so people who attended the conference sat through sessions telling them how to spot emerging markets in the United States and abroad and how to influence the political process.

The number of black-owned firms in the United States grew 46 percent to 620,912 between 1987 and 1992, nearly double the rate for all businesses, according to the most recent Census Bureau figures. Revenues for black-owned enterprises expanded 63 percent during the period, from $19.8 billion to $32.2 billion. That compares to a 67 percent increase, to $3.3 trillion, for all businesses.

Small, marginally profitable service businesses, such as retail stores, beauty shops and employment agencies, accounted for 53 percent of black-owned firms. But Means and others believe that number is dropping, in part because banks and big corporations have realized they can profit by doing business in African-American communities. That has opened doors for African-American entrepreneurs to make money as suppliers, consultants and partners to larger white-owned businesses.

For example, investors in Nu Capital Access Group, a venture capital company that focuses on minority businesses in the San Francisco area, include Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual Inc., said Nu Capital Chairman Len Canty. Bank of America was the first to sign on.

``At the end of the day, the business has to make sense,'' Canty said.

A lack of access to capital is one of the biggest barriers to minority business owners. On average, black-owned businesses start out with less capital and are less likely to get bank loans than white entrepreneurs, according to a 1993 study by Timothy Bates, a professor of labor and urban affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit. The mean level of capital available to new African-American business owners was $12,224. That's 43 percent less than the $17,488 available to whites, Bates found.

Racial prejudice also remains an obstacle for African-American entrepreneurs but has become less of a problem in recent years, said Fred Calloway, president and chairman of BC2 Environmental Corp., a Fullerton-based drilling company that tests soil for contamination. He said 99 percent of his business is with white-owned companies.

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PHOTO (Color) Ron Anderson, president of Demand & Supply Fulfillment Center, mans a booth at the African-American Business Summit.

Victoria Arocho/Associated Press