> Small businesses don’t get the spotlight, but they are the engine of the economy. To wit, in the United States: 99.9% of businesses are small, nearly half the private workforce is employed by small businesses, they generate over 43% of the country’s GDP
This is lying with statistics.
- "Number of businesses" and "percentage of all businesses" is a silly metric, because there are zillions of one-person LLCs for everything from hosting a blog to renting out a spare room in your house, which are not "businesses" in any real sense.
- Every franchise location (i.e. every fast food restaurant, gas station, etc.) in America counts as a separate "small business" and its employees are "employed by small business", even though franchisees have little independence or control, and for all practical purposes are just extensions of the megacorp they are franchising from. Franchising is mostly a way for megacorps to offload the risk of setting up new locations onto the taxpayer, via letting franchisees qualify for government-subsidized "small business" loans.
Do not uncritically repeat facts from sources like the "U.S. Small Business Administration", which for all intents and purposes is a lobbying group for U.S. Large Businesses.
Small businesses don’t get the spotlight, but they are the engine of the economy. To wit, in the United States: 99.9% of businesses are small, nearly half the private workforce is employed by small businesses, they generate over 43% of the country’s GDP
Hardly. Look at the concentration of the nasdaq 100--it's all huge companies. Same for the DJIA. Big companies play an increasingly important role.
The nasdaq 100 is the largest companies that exist. That's why that index exists. Ditto for S&P-500.
The DJIA is also exclusively large capital businesses.
Pretty much any index out there is going to be primarily composed of the largest players in the market, that's just how these things work.
I’m sorry that line sticks out to me. Are you implying that big businesses already don’t dominate the economy?
In the US, it's generally very easy to create a "business," which doesn't even need to be a separate legal entity.
I'd guess that a substantial portion of the companies in the denominator have no employees and are just entities for owning a piece of property, or for someone's occasional graphic design work, or whatever. They are legally businesses, but not businesses in the way that we commonly think, such as a local auto shop or retail store.
This is correct, but misleading. In the US, something like > 60% of GDP come from just the US companies in the Fortune 500.
Unless you're AI, social network, or one of many other examples of start-ups having a large valuation despite not having obvious customers.
JohnFen•1h ago
If you're a small business, lean into being that and you'll have a much larger chance of success. Don't try to pretend that you're something you're not.
voxl•1h ago
Tautologically all business (big versus big included) are fundamentally different, and hence have different strengths and weaknesses.
Hence, it is not a priori true that the category of small businesses has unique advantage (as a category) over big businesses. You of course have done nothing to argue that they do.
sorcerer-mar•53m ago
replwoacause•39m ago
yamazakiwi•28m ago
You basically dismissed someone for making a fair comparison because they didn't give you a concrete example like: A local coffee shop remembering customer names vs a large chain with a impersonal script.
Giving an example in this way is not a requirement, you can use your brain as well. Unless you just didn't read what they typed thoroughly enough and mistook their point.
cogman10•23m ago
yamazakiwi•11m ago
I think it's interesting to talk about how "act your size" can also be wrong. Sometimes fake-it-til-you-make-it is the goal. Contextually you should hold both ideas to be true and apply them appropriately.
Maybe you just thought the original post is a vague platitude and you don't want to give them the satisfaction. Or maybe we can share some that we've experienced, like hiring generalists vs struggling to maintain departments you can't sustain.
Right now I'm in a generalist role, and I look for smaller businesses for this reason because I find my impact is higher, and repetitive work is my greatest fear.