America’s Small-Business Boom Comes Without New Jobs: Justin Fox

While US financial markets brace for what could be the three biggest initial public offerings ever, most entrepreneurship in the US is headed in the opposite direction: New businesses are shrinking.

Some of this has to do with the leverage provided by technology. Two of those three potential gigantic IPOs, large-language-model purveyors OpenAI and Anthropic, have employee numbers far smaller than any other company with valuations approaching $1 trillion. (The third, SpaceX, has a somewhat larger headcount.) And you’re probably familiar by now with reports of startups using LLMs to bring in big revenue numbers with hardly any employees.

But most of the ...