Most small business programs measure activity. We measure outcomes.
Leaders investing in small business growth are being asked to prove that the important work they do to support startups and small businesses is making an impact. Yet many are still tracking vanity metrics that can’t show how their work shapes outcomes. GSD tracks founder outcomes to show founders how to grow their businesses, and to show the organizations supporting them where they’re making the most impact and where there’s still opportunity to close the gap.
How do you know your startup and small business support is moving the needle?
You know your work is making a difference. Founders keep coming to you, your partners show up, and every loan, grant, workshop, or initiative feels like it mattered. But once founders move on, they go quiet. When your leadership, your team, your funders, or the community you serve asks what changed for those businesses, you’re piecing together an answer from memory.
Most of the time, what you can point to is the number of applications, a handful of success stories, and knowledge that lives in people’s heads. You can’t show which businesses grew revenue, hired, or are still standing long after they worked with you. That makes it hard to show the people you’re accountable to that your work is delivering, and hard to know where to invest next. It also means the eligibility rules and definitions you inherited may be leaving out the businesses actually driving growth in your community, and you’d have no way to see it.
Imagine knowing, not hoping.
Imagine being able to show your community, your team, and your funders exactly which businesses your work helped grow, how many people they hired, and how they’re doing years later. Imagine seeing which founders your criteria are missing before you set them again, and knowing where your next investment of time, money, or attention will make the biggest difference. That’s what becomes possible when your work is measured by outcomes instead of activity.
HOW WE PARTNER
Prove Your Impact
We give you outcome data you can bring to a board meeting, a community town hall, a funding application, or your own team’s planning. That means revenue, growth, and survival tracked across the founders you serve over time, plus benchmarks that show how your work compares to similar organizations, your region, and national averages. You can use it on its own or embed it into the work you already do.
Run a Program Built to Produce Results
We design and deliver revenue-first accelerators end to end, including recruitment, curriculum, facilitation, and a closing Deal Day with funders and city leaders. Outcome tracking starts on application day and continues quarterly and annually after the program ends, so you finish with a report as well as a cohort. Our Scale Ready Studio founders, in partnership with Women.NYC and NYCEDC, have seen results like 61% growing revenues, 47% of business owners emerging from the program profitable, or 41% hiring during the program. These are the outcomes we can measure.
Put Your Results in Front of Decision-Makers
Data only matters when the people you’re accountable to can see it and act on it. We help you turn your outcomes into a story your leadership, funders, partners, and community can understand, broken down by the communities you serve so each stakeholder sees the impact closest to them.
