3 Things You Should Know About Small Business: July 19

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- What's happening in small business today?

1. Best Buy and Verizon are teaming up to offer small businesses tech support. Most small companies can't afford in-house tech support. Best Buy (BBY) and Verizon (VZ) plan to alleviate that challenge, according to Inc.com. Best Buy has already been deploying its own Geek Squad on house calls for years. Now it's teaming with Verizon to provide 24/7 tech support services to small and mid-size businesses through an a la carte menu of IT options and hardware and software.

Businesses do not have to already be Verizon customers to use the service, which was announced by the companies on Wednesday. Basic service will cost $15 (per user/per month) for hardware and software support for PCs and Macs only. Premium service will cost $25 a month and offer additional support for mobile devices and tablets, among other things, Inc.com says.

2. Should U.S. presidents have business experience? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been pushing his business acumen as a major selling point for strengthening the U.S. economy. In fact, Romney has even spoken on the campaign trail in support of a constitutional amendment requiring presidents to have been employed at a for-profit company for at least three years. Several publications have taken a fresh look at whether business experience should be a presidential requirement, just as the latest polls show President Obama losing ground on the economy as an issue with voters.

Will a president really be better at his job if he's had business experience?

A recent Entrepreneur article by Case Western University Professor Scott Shane tried to answer that question. Shane conducted research showing that six of the 10 "best" presidents had business experiences and some of them had notable failures. On the other hand, some of the worst presidents "hit entrepreneurial home runs," according to a Huffington Post article.

HuffPo compiled a list of past presidents with good and bad entrepreneurial experience.

3. Only in New York can you find a café that only sells ... water. There's a new East Village café but it isn't selling lattes. Molecule, aka the Water Café, is filtering New York City's finest tap water down to its purest form and selling it for $2.50, according to DNAinfo.com.

The store has been in the works for 18 months and is taking the concept seen in water shops in Los Angeles and expanding the idea by using a $20,000 filtering system to bring the water down to its purest form. The store plans to sell the water for in-home use and for patrons to stop in for a serving, with their choice of supplements like immunity or energy boost, DNAinfo.com says.

-- Written by Laurie Kulikowski in New York.

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