Starting up
Whether you opened the little coffee shop you’d dreamed about on slow afternoons at your 9-5, or you took the opportunity to get your ultra-ambitious, future-unicorn tech hustle off the ground, there’s no doubt that the pandemic poured fuel on the fire of the famous American entrepreneurial spirit.
In the age of the "side hustle", data from the US Census Bureau reveals that a whopping ~3.1 million new business applications have been filed so far in 2023, with a little over 1 million of those filed as "high-propensity" applications — likely, based on various criteria, to actually turn into businesses with employees and full payroll systems.
We're gonna make it
Even with the often-cited stat about the 20% fail rate of new businesses in the first year, and new research suggesting founders have a tougher time getting back into work if their startups don’t take off, American entrepreneurs don’t seem fazed by the inherent risks of setting up new ventures.
Looking at just the "high-propensity" business formations, often seen as a better indicator of actual economy-impacting new businesses, reveals that new 2023 ventures are so far tracking ahead of nearly every year since 2013. The exception is 2021, when more businesses were formed than ever before — there's nothing like necessity to get people to take a risk and start a company.
