Building Community Around Growing Companies

Second Stage Companies

Growth Issues vs Survival

Intent to Grow

Capacity to Grow

Enterprise Composition

Privately Held Businesses 10-99 Employees Revenue $1 M to $50 M Double-Digit Rate of Growth

Importance of Second-Stage Companies

Create jobs

Attract money

Attract talent

Drive culture

Drive community direction

Affect philanthropy

Drive policy decisions through identified needs

Understanding the Second-Stage Entrepreneur

If you really want to understand, you must listen and be willing to look beyond the obvious.

How to Spot a Second-StagerMoves fast and faces complex problems, often many at the same time

Not attracted to traditional ways of learning

Content must be relevant instead of unique

Need to build systems so they can step away from the business

Too much business can trip them up faster than too little – capacity issues

Hard to gain their trust / High Trust level of Peers

Easily frustrated by bureaucracy

Process everything through the lens of their business

May love creating but not managing

Very positive

Strong internal locus of control

Does Your Culture Look Like Theirs?

Do you listen to ideas, then act and implement quickly?

Can you live with making mistakes?

Are you willing to change some of your direction to serve your audience?

Do you understand outside audiences well enough to find and match resources?

Is it OK if you don’t know everything?

Our Role in Second Stage

Spreading the word

Research and data analysis

Program development

Community convener

Our Programs

Your Economy

Longitudinal Database

15 Years / 37 Million records

Key Measurements:

Resident Enterprises

Non-Resident Enterprises

Non-Commercial Enterprises

Births and Deaths of Establishments

Impact on Jobs

Elkhart County Key Trends 2005-2007

Document ARelationships of Establishments to Jobs

1. Nonresident Companies had the highest % change (-6.2%) compared to other establ ishment cr i ter ia (the only one with a negat ive number)

2 . Nonresident Companies had the largest change in the number of jobs (-8.1%)

3. Number of Resident Companies grew by 4.6% in that t imeframe

4. Resident Companies added 2.7% of jobs

Document B Net New Establishments

OPENED RESIDENT ESTABLISHMENT grew 3.86 %

Relocated firms fell 0.16%

Net New Establishments grew 3.7 %

Mostly from first stagers ( 384 )

Net New Jobs“Opened” establishments lost 4.3% of the jobs

Expansion of companies added 3.42% of the jobs

Relocated establishments had a negative impact -.03 on jobs

Net new jobs was -.09%

Document B continued

How much worse would it have been without expansion of existing firms ?

The Bottom Line

Do you know who the growth oriented “expansion” companies are?

Do you know “how” you add value to these establishments?

How do you help first stages make the “leap” to second stage?

How do you help Second-stagers sustain and thrive?

Job growth comes from “resident” company expansion

Economic Gardening provides resources to growth oriented “Resident” companies

Don’t Make it so Hard!

Let your audience be your guide

Unleash your creativity

Trust your audience

Trust yourself

Tell everybody what you’re doing

Tell your own audience what you’re doing

Tell everyone about your audience