As I sit here and ruminate about hiring, payroll and scaling our sales pipeline without keeling over from lack of sleep coupled with indecent amounts of caffeine, I’m also thinking about my fellow startups. And founders like me struggling to do everything themselves because an extra expense too early can sink a newly launched ship – but so can taking too long vis-a-vis onboarding a new team member, and thereby losing vital time to market.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses create 1.5 million jobs annually and account for 64% of new jobs created in the United States.
And yet, it’s small businesses that have it the worst when it comes to securing government contracts, knowing about or qualifying for federal and local grant opportunities, and having access to up-skilling services for founders and employees.
All that, of course, is all the more relevant when it comes to historically disadvantaged communities, whether it be by race, gender, sexual orientation or geographical location. And yet…
I come back to the same statistic. Small businesses are, and likely will remain for some time, the backbone of global economies. Just imagine how much stronger, more load-bearing that backbone would be with better infrastructure in place to make it easier for the founders! And then… well, why stop at imagine?
Right? Right.
