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Should we be measuring Scaleups instead of Startups?

A great majority (90%?) of "start-ups" are local market (retail, service)

That segment of the economy is being commoditized and consolidated (Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, etc.), drying up local market companies

Then:

— is total start-ups an important number anymore?

Or:

Should we be tracking scale-ups instead?

Chris Gibbons

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Startup VS Small Business

I think, in general, that the media does a very poor job of segmenting different catagories of businesses.

One place we see this is with "Startup"… Long after new companies have gone on to be profitable functioning businesses, they are still considered startups.

I try to distinguish the "startup" , which is a organization seeking a business model, from a "small business", which is just a small business , which knows its business model and just needs to execute.

When the media reports, they just look at business registrations which does not reflect this difference at all.

When some parts of the US are doing very well and are hiring like mad, it is hard to get people to do startups because they have a much safer and more fun experience with the BigCo that is now willing to pay them $132K / year for entry level programmers. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/report-average-tech-worker-salary-seattle-hits-132k-making-city-top-spot-relocation/

And as you say, in other places where the local retail is under broad transformation, where companies like Amazon and Wallmart change the rules of the local retail game, the business opportunity in those communities is reduced.

I doubt we can ever get good data about "startups" vs "growth businesses" vs "Small-businesses".
But I think we can find ways to track the progress of specific small groups of growth businesses in communities by looking at their funding events.

As you say, if we are using "new company registrations" as a reference point for "new growth company – IE startups", then we have a very noisy and ineffective data source and we should probably not pay attention to it.

sechrest

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