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This is fantastic advice. Being small can be an asset, yet it's often treated as a liability. Sure, there are some things your company can't do because you don'

This is fantastic advice. Being small can be an asset, yet it's often treated as a liability. Sure, there are some things your company can't do because you don't have as much cash in the bank as Google, but there are some things your company can do that Google can't compete with because it's too big.

chii 14y ago
The size is neither an asset nor a liability - its just an attribute. However size can determine whether you can do certain things. Unfortunately, small size prevents you from making profit from economy of scale, and so you must somehow differentiate with other attributes (such as personalized services). But i think the market has spoken - large size business is more valuable and thus make more profit than a small sized business.
- smokeyj 14y ago
  Googling "what percent of economy is small business" yields http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/businessfinance/a/sbatopten.htm http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/businessfinance/a/sbatopten.ht...
  - EGreg 14y ago
    10. Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers. 9. Small businesses create more than 50 percent of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP). From this it follows that "not-so-small businesses" create the other 50% of nonfarm private GDP, despite being only 0.03% of employers right? So what is the conclusion exactly?
    - xmodem 14y ago
      The conclusion is simple - economies of scale for larger businesses are incredibly powerful.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - EGreg 14y ago
        To me it says that small businesses are the long tail, but large businesses are also interesting and valuable in their own right. Both are going to be around, and a "healthy" distribution is probably good for us.
    - ronilan 14y ago
      That small businesses do not control resources (natural or otherwise) from which production can be extracted at a high per-employee ratio.
      - tbrownaw 14y ago
        6. Small businesses employ about 50 percent of all private sector workers. Not-so-small businesses do have slightly higher production per employee, but not that much more (assuming that "more than 50%" implies "less than the next round percent after 50"). What it really means is that 99.7small-business-size == 0.3large-business-size ==> not-so-small businesses average 330x as big as small businesses. Which is perfectly understandable, for example my employer has something like 10k employees.
    - T-hawk 14y ago
      The conclusion is that you're misinterpreting that number. Small businesses are 99.7% of employers, but do not hire 99.7% of employees and do not represent that fraction of business activity. "An employer" is not a meaningful unit of economy because it varies so wildly in size. This argument is like comparing the United States to the other 199 countries in the world and concluding that the US should represent 0.5% of world economic activity. It's mistakenly treating entities of vastly different sizes as equivalent in the same population set.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  >But i think the market has spoken - large size business is more valuable and thus make more profit than a small sized business. The market has spoken? Do you actually know anything about "the markets"? The first thing a company does when it can is start investing in politics so they can erect barriers against competition. The market hasn't said shit because it wasn't asked.

chii 14y ago

The size is neither an asset nor a liability - its just an attribute. However size can determine whether you can do certain things. Unfortunately, small size prevents you from making profit from economy of scale, and so you must somehow differentiate with other attributes (such as personalized services). But i think the market has spoken - large size business is more valuable and thus make more profit than a small sized business.

smokeyj 14y ago
Googling "what percent of economy is small business" yields http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/businessfinance/a/sbatopten.htm http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/businessfinance/a/sbatopten.ht...
- EGreg 14y ago
  10. Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers. 9. Small businesses create more than 50 percent of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP). From this it follows that "not-so-small businesses" create the other 50% of nonfarm private GDP, despite being only 0.03% of employers right? So what is the conclusion exactly?
  - xmodem 14y ago
    The conclusion is simple - economies of scale for larger businesses are incredibly powerful.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - EGreg 14y ago
      To me it says that small businesses are the long tail, but large businesses are also interesting and valuable in their own right. Both are going to be around, and a "healthy" distribution is probably good for us.
  - ronilan 14y ago
    That small businesses do not control resources (natural or otherwise) from which production can be extracted at a high per-employee ratio.
    - tbrownaw 14y ago
      6. Small businesses employ about 50 percent of all private sector workers. Not-so-small businesses do have slightly higher production per employee, but not that much more (assuming that "more than 50%" implies "less than the next round percent after 50"). What it really means is that 99.7small-business-size == 0.3large-business-size ==> not-so-small businesses average 330x as big as small businesses. Which is perfectly understandable, for example my employer has something like 10k employees.
  - T-hawk 14y ago
    The conclusion is that you're misinterpreting that number. Small businesses are 99.7% of employers, but do not hire 99.7% of employees and do not represent that fraction of business activity. "An employer" is not a meaningful unit of economy because it varies so wildly in size. This argument is like comparing the United States to the other 199 countries in the world and concluding that the US should represent 0.5% of world economic activity. It's mistakenly treating entities of vastly different sizes as equivalent in the same population set.
flyinRyan 14y ago
>But i think the market has spoken - large size business is more valuable and thus make more profit than a small sized business. The market has spoken? Do you actually know anything about "the markets"? The first thing a company does when it can is start investing in politics so they can erect barriers against competition. The market hasn't said shit because it wasn't asked.