GoDaddy Inc. announced that its Venture Forward research initiative has launched the Microbusiness Data Hub. Leveraging GoDaddy’s position as the world’s largest service platform for entrepreneurs everywhere, the Microbusiness Data Hub offers unprecedented access to free, downloadable data on more than 20 million microbusinesses and the entrepreneurs who own them.
Venture Forward created the Microbusiness Data Hub to assist the efforts of all those working to build stronger, more inclusive economies. Policymakers, economic development planners, researchers, data scientists, academics and anyone interested can access the five unique datasets available for download, as well as information from more than 21,000 business owner surveys completed to date. The Microbusiness Data Hub will be updated quarterly with additional data, including refreshed measurements of microbusiness density, our proprietary Microbusiness Activity Index, and new survey responses from select markets across the United States.
“What makes our data so unique is that most microbusinesses don’t show up in economic data because they’re too small or too new. Our data gives voice to a group that is such a large part of our local economies,” said Jeremy Hartman, vice president, Venture Forward and community engagement at GoDaddy. “When we started Venture Forward in 2018, our goal was always to share this data with anyone who would find it helpful, from policymakers to data scientists. We’re excited that we can finally offer a powerful group of datasets for anyone to utilize to inform policies and programs in their areas.”
The Microbusiness Data Hub currently includes five unique datasets:
- U.S. Microbusiness Density: This dataset showcases how many active microbusinesses there are in a given city, county or state. This is a powerful tool for understanding where microbusinesses are taking hold and how patterns change over time.
- Entrepreneur Survey: These results include national and U.S. city surveys and provide a look into who microbusiness entrepreneurs are as well as their needs, challenges and goals. This data can help inform policies, programs and trends for diverse entrepreneurs across the U.S.
- U.S. Microbusiness Industry and Commerce: This dataset provides insight into the online commercial activity trends of microbusinesses at multiple geographic destinations. It ranks all the covered communities based on the number of sellers, orders and gross merchandise value observed.
- U.S. Microbusiness Activity Index: Developed in partnership with economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, this proprietary Index tracks several factors that impact the success of online microbusinesses. It helps determine how healthy and active a community’s performance is with respect to microbusinesses, and how that community changes over time
- Great Britain Microbusiness Data: In 2021, Venture Forward expanded to include research on Great Britain, finding that, as in the U.S., microbusinesses have a significant economic impact on their communities.
“It is important to our region to identify, better understand and effectively support microbusinesses,” said Jaime Cruz, executive director, Nevada Workforce Connections. “The Venture Forward data can help us build and maintain a healthy ecosystem for microbusinesses to grow and prosper.”
All data provided on the Microbusiness Data Hub is anonymized and aggregated to protect customer privacy.
Venture Forward is a multi-year research effort conducted by GoDaddy to quantify the impact millions of microbusinesses have on the U.S. and U.K. economies and their local communities, as well as insight into their needs, demographics, and trends as they’re often too small or too new to show up in traditional government-based methods of capturing economic data.
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