Comments on: The nature and evolution of entrepreneurially driven American small businesses

By: JLM

JLM — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:59:00 +0000

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The source data for this article is very solid but unfortunately there is no further info available. I also suspect that this data is summarized in a manner that makes a few assumptions.

I always see a number of 28MM small businesses in the US but this info adds up to just less than 27MM — clsoe enough for government work?

BRC
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By: William Mougayar

William Mougayar — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 01:23:00 +0000

I like that chart & have never seen this segmentation before. 2 thoughts come to mind:
– I’d like to see the # of people employed for each segment. Do you know if it’s available?
– if 1/4 of the solo’s hired 1 more unemployed person, that would take care of 5 million jobs. Imagine the impact.

By: JLM

JLM — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 17:04:00 +0000

In reply to pointsnfigures.

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Well, the short answer is that Groupon — one of the biggest head fakes in history — ceased to be a “small company” some considerable period of time ago.

The purpose of the blog post was to provide a framework that is applicable to the largest segment of the economy which can fairly be categorized as “small” and whose development follows some orderly sense of growth in revenues, employees and complexity.

Groupon, Instagram and a slew of others spin beyond the constraints of this discussion and thus the discussion itself is not adequate to explain that phenomenon.

The Big Red Car does not know everything and is limited by its small body of experience and knowledge. But the BRC is learning.

The Groupon phenomenon — hyper growth and hyper value ? — is not only an outlier, it is a freakin’ miracle.

BRC

By: pointsnfigures

pointsnfigures — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:55:00 +0000

What does this mean for a company like Groupon that had explosive success and transitioned from one form to another in the blink of an eye? Ignore the thoughts about their business model, revenue model etc. It seems $GRPN is an extreme case (kind of like economics and the study of perfectly inelastic markets, or perfectly competitive markets)