Originally published by GoDaddy’s Venture Forward Research Initiative
University of Missouri’s extension program leaders Dr. Natalia Filimonova and Alan Spell have created an interactive dashboard to visualize GoDaddy Venture Forward’s geographical data, empowering staff at the university’s Small Business Development Center to counsel microbusinesses and educate local residents.
The team, which provides classes to local residents, typically adults who are interested in learning new information or skills, began utilizing Venture Forward’s geographical data during the pandemic – a time when it became critical for entrepreneurs to understand how to get their online microbusinesses to succeed.
In response, Filimonova and Spell leveraged Venture Forward data to create a dashboard to track microbusiness activity index, a score developed by economists at the UCLA Anderson Forecast in partnership with Venture Forward that tracks dozens of factors that impact the success of online microbusinesses, and microbusiness density over time.
Launch Dashboard
With MU Extension staff directly counselling microbusinesses, the tool allows them to visual Venture Forward’s microbusiness data and help educate local residents by, for example, comparing local metro versus non-metro areas or differences by economic type in a particular state.
Q: Can you tell us a little about MU Extension, and how you’re using Venture Forward data?
Alan: We’re part of the University of Missouri Extension system. Of course, every state has an extension, but not every state has a focus on economic development at a similar scale to ours in Missouri. Economic development is our goal, providing information to extension folks, and, of course, the public on economic topics. We noticed Venture Forward’s online business data around the pandemic time when a lot of this information was gaining importance. Our Extension runs most Small Business Development Centers in Missouri, so we have a lot of counselors who advise small businesses on entrepreneurship issues and how to grow their operations. When the pandemic struck, we were looking for any kind of data that we could use to understand what might be happening with online commerce. The Venture Forward data was a new set of information that we’d never had before and it was at county-level, which is critical because many folks want to know what’s happening in their area. We started by just doing briefs using information like Venture Forward’s Microbusiness Activity Index and Microbusiness Density.
We thought it was important enough to put it into a data visualization that could look at things over time. Importantly, Venture Forward already normalize the data by dividing it by population. Big cities are going to have more than small towns, but when you control for that, do metros generally do better than non-metros? Because, in Extension, we are often interested in rural development challenges as smaller communities can lack timely business data. So, when we talked about what we were going to visualize, we made that non-metro/metro distinction so that we could compare places and see if there were differences.
That was the reason we developed the dashboard: to take Venture Forward data, which is already easy to understand, and put it on a dashboard so we can look at it over time.
Natalia: We collected the data and we decided to divide it up by metro versus non-metro areas. We also wanted to divide these counties by economic development type, like agriculture and manufacturing, to see how it could impact density.
Alan: That’s the project that we just completed. We combined USDA economic type information, which includes six categories, with the Venture Forward density data. We didn’t know what to expect, but it seemed interesting because we see population trends that are impacted by economic types.
Q: When you say “population trends,” do you mean migration patterns?
Alan: Yes. In July we came out with a brief on 2020-2023 population trends in Missouri, but there’re parallels in the U.S. For example, our city cores, like St Louis City and Jackson County, which is Kansas City, had out migration but suburban and adjacent non-metro counties gained population. It reflects the hybrid work reality, of the cheaper housing options on the outskirts of metros and not having to be at the office five days a week. We saw what was happening nationally also occur here.
The other trend that was interesting was looking at county economic types, such as recreation. Many states, whether it’s the beaches along South Carolina or lakes in Missouri, had recreational places that lit up in terms of population gains, even though they’re far away from bigger metros. Their broadband is fine and often they’re retirement meccas. For example in Missouri, people from Kansas City and St. Louis often vacation at the Lake of the Ozarks. If they have remote work options, they can say ‘I’m going to live there year-round’, so recreation-based economies are capturing this population shift.
To complement the dashboard, we also developed a Microbusiness density research brief, published this month, that describes how Missouri counties compare to similar U.S. places.
Q: We’ve seen in our survey results that the number of people who are saying getting online is a challenge has gone down in the last couple years. To your point, the pandemic really served as a catalyst for people getting more comfortable getting online or pivoting online. What’s interesting is that we still see that they struggle with just marketing, knowing what to do, and access to capital. Are you seeing the same?
Alan: Yeah. Access to capital is nothing new, but there are questions of “how do you do this?” At least doing something that’s less capital intensive to start, such as a microbusiness, let’s them learn the basics of marketing and running a business.
Q: For small businesses, as you’re saying, digital presence is an essential component. Do you see more businesses being online only?
Alan: We don’t have solid numbers to really tell us at this time, but I think that’s got to be the case. Heck, two of my kids already sell stuff online. I think the younger generation is definitely more digitally savvy, and just more comfortable in that space. When thinking about rural areas, there are generally fewer younger folks relative to other places, and maybe less industry diversity. Helping existing rural businesses that aren’t online with technology can be a challenge, especially with older entrepreneurs. I think it’s going to get better, obviously, year after year with more learning, but it’s just not there yet. I think a lot of places are still missing out.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to highlight about the dashboard and how you hope people use it?
Natalia: I think it’s interesting to use because you find different trends. You can compare different counties by metro and non-metro and it’s useful to make decisions like how to develop microbusiness activity. Using this dashboard, we can compare different years and different states. It can help explain why microbusiness open their activity in certain states and why do they prefer it there?
Dr. Natalia Filimonova
Natalia is a visiting scholar at the University of Missouri who collaborates on projects with the MU Extension Exceed program. Her research interests include the development of small business strategies, the evaluation of startup support programs and innovative approaches to regional development. Natalia is actively engaged in creating interactive dashboards that enhance the understanding of regional economic processes using Power BI.
Natalia holds a Doctor of Economics degree from Saint Petersburg State University and a Candidate of Economic Sciences degree from Vladimir State University. She also serves as a visiting professor at BINUS University in Jakarta, Indonesia. Natalia has received grants from Tel Aviv University, the Fulbright Program and various Russian scientific foundations and has published 45+ peer-reviewed journal articles in leading journals and presented at international conferences.
Alan Spell
Alan Spell is an Assistant Extension Professor within the MU Division of Applied Social Sciences. He specializes in economic and industry research for MU Extension’s Exceed program. Spell’s work includes publishing the monthly Missouri Economy Indicator briefs, conducting broadband and industry economic impact analyses, and providing data training.
Prior to 2020, Spell led the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC), the state’s labor market information and economic development office, where his staff provided analysis to policymakers and the public. Spell is a certified Economic Research Professional and holds degrees in economics and landscape architecture. He has worked in economic development research for over 25 years.
For more than 100 years, University of Missouri Extension and Engagement has worked with partners across our campus and state to share knowledge and resources that improve the lives of all Missourians, especially in these areas of greatest need.
About Venture Forward
GoDaddy’s Venture Forward research initiative analyzes more than 20 million online businesses with a digital presence (measured by a unique domain and an active website). Most of these businesses employ fewer than ten people, categorizing each as a microbusiness. While these microbusinesses may be small, their impact on economies is outsized even though they are often too informal or too new to show up in traditional government statistics.
Since 2018, Venture Forward surveyed more than 30,000 small business owners with a digital presence, making it the source for microbusiness data and insights.
