A Plan for Small Business Growth?

Hat-tip to @JamesGreenThing for the link to the last Business Insider list of up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

These lists are always much more interesting 6 months on. In this case, the bubble in online coupons is more obvious, as is the fact that the fashion market is getting the Web 2.0 treatment. Yet BankSimple still hasn't launched.

Online invoice discounting has been on my radar since early 2008. So it's heartening that The Receivables Exchange is highly rated in the US, and reassuring that MarketInvoice is gaining traction in the UK. Doubtless there'll be more on that front soon.

Partly for that reason, SecondMarket really caught my eye. It's a market for alternative investments, so incorporates a channel for equity in private companies (e.g. CrowdCube in the UK). But the emphasis on gathering "robust market data" signals a growth in the availability of richer information about private companies. Focus on this is timely, given the massive official paywall around corporate data. Recent commitments to 'Open Government' (follow the Open Knowledge Foundation) are promising. There's already a Government commitment to arm consumers with their own data. Perhaps enabling SMEs to use their own data for their own benefit could be added to The Plan for Growth?

Image from AppAssure.