Small Cities Weekly | 11.03.2023
Outliers, Main St. Summit, & Prop Plane Travels
As part of the work we are doing on the Small City Segment, we send out a brief weekly post of thoughts, links, and research in progress that reflect the week’s work. I’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts, questions, disagreements, or things to add. Please forward this on to people you think might enjoy reading it.
The Outliers in the Small City Infinite Game
Cities are an interesting actor in the entrepreneurship ecosystem because they have an infinite time horizon. A city can’t “win” or “lose”, it’s just trying to earn the right to continue existing. Entrepreneurship is part of a portfolio of activities that try to keep the city alive and thriving.
Besides wanting companies that stay in our cities, what kind of businesses do we want to build? Everyone wants outliers, but along what dimension can we be competitive?
From a city’s standpoint, optimizing for resilience makes much more sense than optimizing for growth. Ideally, of course, we’d want both, but sometimes they are in conflict. Growth is important - it’s is the mechanism for net new jobs and often higher-paying ones. The risk taken to get the the growth is what needs to paying attention to; maintaining optionality along the way is really important to staying in the game.
I think a brand of outliers small cities could build a reputation for is durability.
Research is showing that businesses have shorter life spans today than they did 60 years ago. Lasting decades (and definitely a century!) is rare today. Companies that focus on staying around for longer, even if at times it means growing slower, are exciting because of the stability they can bring to our communities. Twenty sustainably growing $50M companies are more resilient than one $1B rocket ship.
As a founder, if you have an outlier durable business, you give yourself the opportunity to grow when it makes sense. If you focus on an outlier growth business, you do not guarantee yourself to be durable - and in fact can damage your chances of doing so.
Producing these kind of companies is not to be confused with making a statement about ambition. It’s an argument about how to go about achieving our ambitions. South Bend was built in parallel with companies like Studebaker and Oliver Chilled Plow. They both lasted over 100 years, but took a long path to become as large as they did. Nobody would question the ambition or achievement of these companies.
Along the way, they also contributed to building a city, one that has survived them both. It’s sad that they no longer exist, but part of their legacy is the roads, parks, civic institutions, and paths to the middle class they built along the way.
In other words, they did their part in continuing the city’s infinite game.
Today, another generation of 50, 70, and 100-year old companies, started in the middle of the last century, are carrying that legacy forward.
We are responsible for starting the things that will keep the game alive into the future.
Links
Main Street Summit, Columbia, MO
A festival for SMB owners, operators, and investors.
An immersive two-day experience for small to medium-sized businesses with ~10-500 employees.Choose your own adventure amongst a diverse set of presentations, interviews, debates, workshops, and conversations.
Every business has a birthplace and it’s never too far from Main Street.
Maria and I are heading to Columbia, MO (a small city itself!) for the Main Street Summit next week. We think there is a lot to learn from both the speaker lineup and the attendees, as we think through topics like durability and what businesses that are “never too far from Main Street” look like to build.
Our Towns, James & Deborah Fallows
“What makes a city what it is?” James Timmerman of the Sentinel asked when we talked with him. Timmerman grew up in Southern California but moved to Holland (Michigan) with his wife, a Hope College professor, in the early 1990s. He answered his own question: “It’s because of the local entrepreneurs who started their companies here, kept them here, and remained active in the community.”
This book was published back in 2018 and has since become an HBO documentary. I’m re-reading for the first time in a few years. It follows the couple, two writers, on their cross-country trip in a single-engine prop plane to visit places that don’t show up in the national news. Well worth the read!
A New Sustainable and Connected Mixed-Use Center, Utah City, UT
Welcome to Utah City - a sustainable and connected urban center designed to redefine. Designed to offer living options that prioritize walkability and wellness. Designed to attract the best in business and entertainment. And most importantly, designed for Utah to thrive.
Utah City is part of the Salt Lake City/Provo metro, but nonetheless it’s interesting to see how people are trying new models of development. One thing I’m really proud of in my home in South Bend is the investment in making it a great place to be - parks, theaters, walking paths, neighborhood business corridors, etc. A lot of small cities already have a lot of good bones to build what Utah City is doing from the ground up.
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