Crain’s Second Stage

What is a second-stage company? Crain’s Detroit Business is describing it as:

Second-stage companies are led by growth-focused entrepreneurs with market-ready products or services. They generally have revenue of $1 million-$50 million with employees in the 10-100 range.

In an article announcing a newly added focus to Crain’s editorial content, Nancy Kaffer explains that:

Netarx is what is known as a “second-stage” company, a growing business with approximately $1 million to $50 million in annual revenue. Such companies are creating jobs more rapidly than their counterparts both smaller and larger, according to the Cassopolis-based Edward Lowe Foundation.

And like Tursi’s company, most second-stage companies haven’t received government benefits or splashy front-page news coverage touting their successes.

But that’s changing.

Second-stage companies are attracting more attention from government entities and the business community, thanks in part to work by the foundation.

In metro Detroit in 2007, second-stage companies — defined by the foundation as having 10-99 employees — employed 611,581 people. That was 35.7 percent of Michigan’s jobs, more than in any other company category in the state.

In contrast, stage-one companies (those with one to nine employees) employed 499,726, stage-four companies (more than 500 employees) employed 391,980, and stage-three companies (100-499 employees) employed 300,488.

It’s a consistent trend: In the years for which the foundation has compiled data, second-stage companies always have had the most jobs, despite overall job declines in recent years.

I applaud this innovation on the part of Crain’s and its attention to that which is driving our economy.

I am also honored that Crain’s invited me to be among a panel of bloggers contributing content to this new content focus. For my first entry, in which I offer second-stage companies some New Year’s resolutions related to PR, click here.

The timing of this latter piece of the story is ironic, for I just last week penned a blog post extolling the virtues of blogging itself, based partly on the premise that, if you do it well, other media may want to syndicate your content on their blogs. And here we are.

There is one of your answers to the question “Should I have a blog?” You won’t get anyone to syndicate your website…but a blog, you just might.