Venture Forward by GoDaddy

“When the COVID-19 crisis hit, Jim Masterson had to figure out how to massage a horse online.” That’s how GoDaddy’s profile of tiny Fairfield, Iowa began. As the story unfolds, we meet the founder of an online bread baking business, a woman who makes art out of cow skulls, and learn that the town traces its entrepreneurial roots to the yogi who taught the Beatles how to meditate.



We found Fairfield because we followed the data. Two years ago, GoDaddy decided to quantify the impact of an overlooked demographic: the 20 million online microbusinesses that use its services. These are most often one person operations, many of which aren’t even registered as businesses.



Company data scientists worked with researchers at major universities, combining data from the Census Bureau, BLS and other public sources with GoDaddy’s own data. They found that communities with more microbusinesses per 100 people have higher household median incomes, recover more quickly from recessions, and create more jobs.



When we looked at the data, Fairfield stood out as having more microbusiness per capita than most cities, and also because its economy seemed to boom as a result. So we used it as a vehicle to get the data out.



Written by former BusinessWeek star reporter Peter Burrows, and brought to life with photos from Fairfield and charts that highlight key data, the feature is a classic example of how brands can tell great stories.