Commentary: In a digital economy, a connected St. Louis region thrives
There’s been an uptick of entrepreneurs flooding the St. Louis area. Our region has been titled an “Entrepreneurial Boomtown” and was recently listed in the 2018 “Top 40 Cities for Entrepreneurs” by Business.org. Business creation in St. Louis has risen annually since 2009. Most notably, it rose 18 percent from 2012-2013, despite a national decrease in business creation. While St. Louis isn’t quite Silicon Valley just yet, there is no denying the sudden boom in startups.
Our region has become a hotspot for new business owners because the economic atmosphere in St. Louis has drastically changed in the past decade. The city realized the need to balance renewed, strong investment in small firms and business owners with the recruitment of corporate headquarters to St. Louis. This new focus on small business, tech startups, and nonprofits has paid off. According to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship, St. Louis narrowed its shortcomings from being 11 percent below the national average in the number of new firms per 100,000 people in 2006, to only 3 percent below the average in just a few short years. In the St. Louis metro, over 9.7 percent of businesses are startups under a year old.
In addition to the accelerators and venture capital resources available to entrepreneurs, some of the most accessible tools are digital. For my business, I use an array of advertising tools and Google My Business to get online and market my services. Through tools like AdWords and AdSense, small businesses, website developers, and nonprofits across the country generated an astonishing $2.13 billion in economic activity in 2016. Nationally, more than 18,000 small businesses and nonprofits receive AdGrants and other digital tools.
It’s clear our region is leading in terms of new business growth rates among cities nationally, and we know women play an important role in this.
The Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs, created by the Kauffman Foundation and the Census Bureau, showed that women own a higher share of startups in Missouri than in any other state, often utilizing digital tools to push their startup forward. Director of small-business development at Google, Scott Levitan, summed it up well, “With 97 percent of Internet users looking for products and services online, it’s clear that success is about being connected.”
Ed Mayuga is a co-owner of AMM Communications.
By Ed Mayuga, St. Louis Business Journal
May 17, 2018, 2:26pm
