The Surprising Secret Behind Small Business Success
More entrepreneurs than ever will open small businesses in 2014. According to a recent report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, early-stage entrepreneurial activity is the highest it’s been since the group began conducting research in 1999. Most won’t survive—one-third will still be around in a decade, according to a 2011 SBA report.
What does it take to survive? Aside from manic drive, moxie, hard work, creativity and luck … maybe a sense of connectedness to a community, local or more global.
Green Flash Brewing Co. of San Diego is a small team that creates distinctive beers sold to restaurants and bars all over the country. It’s a bit of a regional oddball. When Radius pulled data for our list of The 12 Best Cities To Launch A Startup in 2014, we looked at the proportion of the small businesses to all businesses, city by city. San Diego ranked dead last on this measure. It’s a place, after all, where you’re more likely to find a bio-med center than a craft brewery. But San Diego is also a spot where entrepreneurs can thrive because the place is so well-connected in other ways—in the prevalence of small businesses with Facebook pages, credit card acceptance, and online peer reviews that make reputations matters of public record. Social media has helped this brewer build a relationship with its customers locally and nationally.
In San Jose, Calif., Blackbird Tavern is a local restaurant, bar, gallery, and hub of creative nightlife in the center of Silicon Valley. It’s thriving—which is odd, considering it’s the latest tenant in a building that’s turned out a string of failed tenants after its original owner was forced to close shop after the tech bubble burst in 2001. Why? A restaurant that sources local coffee and spirits and features work from local artists, Blackbird Tavern aims to be a “third space,” a concept coined by urban sociologist Ray Oldenberg to define our social surroundings separate from home and work.
In New York City, home of the dwindling book publishing industry, now down to a mighty six houses, comes a startup called Oyster. It borrows the subscription model that has succeeded in online listening (Pandora and Spotify) and online watching (Netflix NFLX -1.32% and Hulu), and makes it available for e-reading. Oyster customers pay monthly fees for unlimited access to over 100,000 books–available anywhere a customer can download the Oyster app. New York, of course, is full of small businesses that bring a technology edge to traditional industries. A delicious irony: Oyster’s model is a throwback to 19th century subscription libraries.
Her Campus Media is competing in one of the most crowded and pre-eminent academic capitals of the world—Boston. An online publication, Her Campus Media is written by women college journalists for “career-minded, distinctly fashionable, socially connected, academically driven, and smartly health-conscious” young women. While most stories read more like Glamourmagazine than Great Expectations, the site has a pleasing mix of controversial topics, popular culture and career advice—reaching out to college chapters around the country.
In Austin, Tex., Vital Farms is a clear alternative to the poultry conglomerates and the environmental depredation of fecal-dense coops. A network of 40 small family organic farmers, Vital Farms is the nation’s largest producer of eggs produced by hens raised in pastures, not cages, and counts Whole Foods Market WFM +0.19% (its Texas neighbor) among its largest customers. Vital Farms started out in 2007 as a local operation with a few dozen hens; now the eggs are available across the country – finding people who care increasingly about the sourcing of their food.
It wasn’t that long ago that Seattle’s Ranier Avenue was a series of uninhabited buildings in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Columbia City. Then La Medusa opened in 1997. Serving Sicilian dishes made from locally-sourced ingredients, it was one of the first of a string of small businesses, like Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzeria, to move on the block. Today the restaurant rubs elbows with weekend brunch hotspots and artisan bakeries–a transformation that hints at a community-oriented small business’s power to pave the way for more small businesses.
Panic was one of the first tech startups in Portland, Ore. Setting up shop in 1998, with a shareware program called Transmit, Panic has continued to develop apps (including Web editing, usenet, status boards and cryptographic network protocols) for Apple AAPL -1.12% devices. The company survived the dot-com bust, and thrived. But it also helped pave the way for a tech renaissance in Portland—a place, our data at Radius shows, where each technology job creates four additional jobs.
It can even happen in Vegas. Madrivo is an integrated marketing agency that helps companies acquire customers digitally, offering heat maps, performance metrics, price sensitivity data and the like. Growing at 400% year over year, it is an example, too, of how the gaming capital of the U.S. is transforming itself into a vibrant technology hub – and how one small business can help impact an entire city.
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