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Well.. don't forget, the distribution of corporations by size isn't even nor is it linear – it's exponential. From small business data taken from: http://www.ce

Well.. don't forget, the distribution of corporations by size isn't even nor is it linear – it's exponential. From small business data taken from: http://www.census.gov/econ/susb/ http://www.census.gov/econ/susb/ – 98.7% of all US firms have fewer than 500 employees. 36.6% have between 5 and 100 employees. To approximate the range you gave, 20.6% of all US firms fall between 10 and 500 employees (The bins in the data don't match your range perfectly) – so it'd be reasonable to guess that ~14% of all US firms are between 10 and 200 people. That's a fairly attractive market – especially considering that if you made it easy enough, you'd draw in more of the smaller companies (say 5-20 employees) and they represent an even bigger slice (~74.5% of all US firms). So yeah, I think it's significant as a target market.

Domenic_S 15y ago
> between 10 and 200 people. That's a fairly attractive market That's crazy. There's not near enough granularity to infer anything about the attractiveness of the market. A firm with 10 people is probably not paying a payroll company; a firm with 200 people almost certainly is.
- philwelch 15y ago
  > A firm with 10 people is probably not paying a payroll company Sounds like an opportunity. If you have 10 people, at least one of them is probably spending their valuable time on payroll; if you had an affordable self-service option that undercut the existing providers, maybe they would pay a payroll company. And the firm with 200 people, maybe you could undercut their payroll company as well.
- incongruity 15y ago
  If you looked at the data, you'd see the granularity you desire. I was summarizing, but it's all there for you to poke at if you'd like to. Also, given the number of companies that have 10 employees vs. 200 employees, if you could figure out how to make those 10 employee companies outsource their payroll, you'd have a decided opportunity (and that was also my point and it's exactly the point that philwelch makes here). The fact that you and everyone else assumes that a firm with 10 people makes it to small to sell to makes it an opportunity for innovation. A well-done web-based setup rather than the higher cost, high-priced sales person/pitch could easily bring down the costs to make it a more economical proposition to serve the (presumably) lower-margin but higher aggregate volume small business segment.

Domenic_S 15y ago

> between 10 and 200 people. That's a fairly attractive market That's crazy. There's not near enough granularity to infer anything about the attractiveness of the market. A firm with 10 people is probably not paying a payroll company; a firm with 200 people almost certainly is.

philwelch 15y ago
> A firm with 10 people is probably not paying a payroll company Sounds like an opportunity. If you have 10 people, at least one of them is probably spending their valuable time on payroll; if you had an affordable self-service option that undercut the existing providers, maybe they would pay a payroll company. And the firm with 200 people, maybe you could undercut their payroll company as well.
incongruity 15y ago
If you looked at the data, you'd see the granularity you desire. I was summarizing, but it's all there for you to poke at if you'd like to. Also, given the number of companies that have 10 employees vs. 200 employees, if you could figure out how to make those 10 employee companies outsource their payroll, you'd have a decided opportunity (and that was also my point and it's exactly the point that philwelch makes here). The fact that you and everyone else assumes that a firm with 10 people makes it to small to sell to makes it an opportunity for innovation. A well-done web-based setup rather than the higher cost, high-priced sales person/pitch could easily bring down the costs to make it a more economical proposition to serve the (presumably) lower-margin but higher aggregate volume small business segment.