"Obama is going to save us," a colleague said to me the day after the election, and while it wasn't clear whether she was talking about our company, our country, our economy or our souls, that wasn't the point. Obama has inspired incredible hope among almost everyone I know, and though there is certainly due caution about impossible expectations, confidence is certainly the first step towards recovery.

For entrepreneurs in general, it's not clear what the new president can do specifically to increase their chances of success (beyond turning around the economy as a whole.) In fact, from a policy standpoint, it's important to make some distinctions when we talk about start-up companies and entrepreneurs, and what might help them fulfil their oft-touted role as the lifeblood of the American system of capitalism.

In the land of entrepreneurs, there are, on the one hand, the classic Silicon Valley technology start-ups, which are funded to the tune of $10 million or $15 million or $50 million by the big venture capital firms of Sand Hill Road. These are the start-ups of legend – Intel and Apple and Amazon and Google – and their funders are working with pools of hundreds of millions in capital (mostly from pension funds) in their quest to find the Next Big Thing.

In this world, there is tremendous support for Obama: he represents the ethos (self-made man), the cultural diversity (half-African!), and the technological savvy and bent towards innovation (online organising and fund-raising were pivotal to his victory) that are core to Silicon Valley's self-image.

On a more practical level, Obama is a big supporter of clean energy, which many in the Silicon Valley view as the next great investment opportunity. Government tax incentives, subsidies and trade policies have a huge impact on the economics of this business, and a serious federal effort to support clean energy will definitely help Silicon Valley.

Obama probably will not support venture capitalists on one issue dear to their hearts – the tax treatment for so-called carried interest, which is now taxed as a capital gain (and thus at a lower rate) but which many think should be treated as ordinary income. But if he comes through on energy, and on increased federal support for technology R&D in general, all will be forgiven.

But the world of "big venture capital" is very different from the world inhabited by many entrepreneurs, including yours truly. I've read countless bits of VC advice recently on how to survive the downturn, and while a lot of it is good sense, a lot of it is almost laughably removed from my reality. My favourite: "Make sure you have at least 18 months of cash in the bank." Hah! If I had 18 months of cash in the bank, I wouldn't need anyone's advice.

Indeed, it's all well and good that Obama is getting input from Silicon Valley kingpins like John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and Eric Schmidt of Google, but as Mark Cuban pointed out in a great post the other day, it would be nice to see him getting input from what I might call the "other start-up world," or OSW.

In the OSW, as Cuban notes, the entrepreneurs often have 100 per cent of their personal net worth on the line (generally not the case in Silicon Valley.) Their biggest worry today is how to make the next payroll, and thus protect the wellbeing of their families and those of their employees. They're not inclined to support new regulations and new taxes, because such things could make it harder to make payroll, but they also don't get much out of tax credits because they don't have much income to tax. They're as concerned as anyone about the health-care crisis, but don't understand why it should be their responsibility to provide health insurance.

In the OSW, government assistance programs always seem to be for someone else, usually the big companies that have the political connections and the personnel resources to work the system. Bankers, and even government economic development organisations that are supposed to help, too often have little time for these entrepreneurs. You expect me to lend you money on that balance sheet? Right. Come back when you're making plenty of profit.

In the OSW, the credit crunch has nothing to do with banks not wanting to lend, since banks have never lent to these companies anyway. Rather it has to do with the dramatic tightening of credit card limits, and with falling real estate values that make it impossible to borrow further against the house.

What do the denizens of the OSW want from Obama? The biggest thing, of course, is getting the macro-economy back on track. My personal short-term wish list would include a new stimulus package, which will be good for business and for the personal finances of myself and my employees; health-care reform that takes the burden off the employer; banking and credit-card regulations that limit the ability of lenders to change their terms unilaterally; and suspension of the penalty on retirement account withdrawals, to free up one of the few remaining sources of OSW capital.

But what I really want is for Obama to inspire, and to run the country half as well as he ran his campaign. If he can do those two things, all kinds of entrepreneurs will be just fine.

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Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a regional news service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard