On August 20, 2026, the Small Business Administration (“SBA”) proposed a comprehensive overhaul of its small business size standards for the first time in decades. The proposal would purportedly simplify industry categorization and raise applicable size thresholds, which the SBA says would allow “small but rapidly growing firms to continue qualifying and [add] over 110,000 firms to the 36 million small businesses in America.” The SBA and its programs (government contracts, l

I’m going to start with a confession: I stole the title of this blog from the book by Duncan J. Watts of the same title. Watts argues that common sense, while great for navigating daily life, is actually a poor tool for understanding complex social systems. We only think it works because of hindsight bias: once we know an outcome, we retroactively construct a story that makes it seem obvious, even though it was never actually predictable. His central thesis is that rather tha

About a third of the small firms in our study have three months of expenses in the bank. About one in ten could last only a week. Most have access to credit, and when they ask for more, they usually get it. Yet two-thirds say they'll rely mainly on savings, not credit, to fund their next investment. Why? And why can the same set of bookkeeping records lead one lender to offer a loan and another to turn it down? Earlier this month, the Financial Access Initiative presented pre

A few weekends ago, while waiting at a crosswalk in New York City, I overheard a conversation between what appeared to be two small business owners. The part I caught was something we hear all too often from small business owners in the U.S.: the long hours they devote to their businesses each week, weekends included, and their shared desire to “just have a break.” Part of what fills those hours is the range of roles an owner personally covers: operator, strategist, bookkee