'Data is the new oil'
True Business Data is a rich new resource for anyone interested in US business data, and the 6 million active small businesses that drive the US economy.
- U.S. Small businesses comprise almost 50% of the private workforce (https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf).
- Recently been called out as critical to the ongoing health of the US economy by 3 important B's: Buffet, Bloomberg and Blankfein (http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/06/07/grow-economy-grow-small-businesses-bloomberg-buffett-column/85526778/).
- However with lack of data, there's little ability for the government to take effective measures to aid this critical ecosystem
'If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It'
Better and more frequent visibility into business health would become an incredibly valuable key economic indicator. With such a datset we could provide a rich new source of data that can be used by the Federal Reserve to closely monitor monthly dynamics at local levels of the economy, and could be shared with other government agencies, business owners, and researchers to better understand this key indicator of the American economy. The fact that the Common Crawl is updated monthly will allow for far more frequent visibility into this rich data then ever before.
A few examples of the power of such data:
- Analyze the impact of $80 billion of economic business incentives state-level government spend each year.
- Enabling granular tracking of thousands of businesses
- Enabling impact assessments of incentives across geographic areas
- Providing up-to date information to decision makers
- Providing local business services e.g. Google Maps, Yelp, a new unbiased business data feed to stay up-to-date.
- A major unsolved problem: have you ever had an issue
- Enabling validation and identification of new and removed businesses in a much rapid fashion
- Business openings and closing present an ongoing issue to this key metric
- Enable academic research on the business ecosystem
- Provides reliable snapshots of local economies across the United States
- Is publicly released with no licensing fees or limitations
- Enables replication by providing common reference data