Forbes Column 08: ‘SaaS-ing’ Back At The Economy

My Zero-In column on Forbes this morning is ‘SaaS-ing’ Back At The Economy. In it, you will see Jim Heeger’s description of the ‘thumbtack’ economy.

There are about 22 to 25 million small businesses in the US. The vast majority of them are mom and pop businesses that do not have employees. Then there are about 5 million “small business employers”. Above small business employers, there are 5.9 million “business employers” in the US, based on W2 filings. Of these 5.9 million, 5.2 million have fewer than 20 employees. The remaining 700,000 entities account for larger business employers. “It is not a pyramid, it is a thumbtack; it is all at the bottom. That is where the action is because there are so many companies to deal with down there,” explains Jim Heeger.

Well, we need to make that 5.2 million sub-20 employee business count number double in the next decade.

How do we do that? Remember Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction? By stimulating entrepreneurship with good policy.

This segment is a part in the series : Forbes Column 08

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“SaaS as Recession-proofing Software” Theme Picking Up…

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CloudAve Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 4:10 PM PT

[…] Sramana Mitra @ Forbes talks about 'SaaS-ing' Back At The Economy: Some of the robustness of SaaS companies comes from the fact that the sector caters heavily to small businesses. This is because their customer base is more spread out and not as concentrated as the large enterprise technology vendors, especially those with heavy exposure to the financial sector. "It is not a pyramid, it is a thumbtack; it is all at the bottom," says PayCycle CEO Jim Heeger. "That is where the action is because there are so many companies to deal with down there."Sramana focuses largely on the SMB space, while my argument for the SaaS model's resilience was more enterprise-y:  […]

"SaaS as Recession-proofing Software" Theme Picking Up | CloudAve Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 4:11 PM PT

[…] I dedicated two of my Forbes columns to the issue: A Recession-free Corner of the Tech Sector and SaaS-ing Back At The Economy. In this installment of the Deal Radar, we look at a SaaS company, […]

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