Did a Newspaper Declare the End of Small Business?

Tomer London says a couple of weeks into COVID, before PPP loans, a major newspaper he thinks was the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page headline like the end of small business, with a picture of everything blocked and shut down. Gusto hopes for a resurgence of small business across America and across the world, and Gusto is seeing the resurgence.

The numbers tell the story, and so does the everyday feeling of seeing small businesses around: they are becoming a more important part of the economy. It had not been like that every single day. For at least nine months, lots of major analysts shared a consensus that small business would shrink and shrink and shrink. A restaurant made the problem obvious, because people stuck at home could not show up.

About a thousand people at Gusto had to work from home. The company's whole reason for existence is making small businesses successful. After the Wall Street Journal headline, people were freaked out, and it was a difficult moment.