I'm guessing much of this "failure to thrive" among startups is driven by the inability of a small US company to deliver services that are commercially sustaina

I'm guessing much of this "failure to thrive" among startups is driven by the inability of a small US company to deliver services that are commercially sustainable. Most startups don't make a product; they resell or provide a service. So their profitability devolves to the margin between their hourly service charge rate and their hourly labor cost. And that profit margin has continued to shrink due to continuing optimizations by large/foreign players in our hyper-optimized global marketplace. Though the article doesn't propose specific causes, since 2008 I suspect the causal changes in small US business to be: 1) domination of product sales and distribution by a handful of on-line mega-retailers (Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart) due to their high efficiency and ever broader and deeper market penetration and hyper-efficient distribution networks, and 2) increased mobility and adaptability to quickly fill newly created market niches from low labor cost foreign firms (still 2X-5X cheaper), and 3) the rising cost of US employees (esp. healthcare). As such, the ability of the traditional ma and pa startup company to eke out a positive cash flow has become more difficult than than it was in 2008.