New AI-Driven Insights Reveal Small Business Owners Are Bullish Despite Constricted Spending

April 30, 2024 at 14:42 PM EDT

Entrepreneurial optimism remains strong across generations, sustained by technology and good purpose.

Clutch, a distinguished women-owned consulting services firm dedicated to helping small business entrepreneurs and government organizations grow, launched its first inaugural Clutch Entrepreneur Tracker. This quarterly data analysis evaluates the emotional state of entrepreneurial spending, highlighting key reasons driving the rampant increase in people leaving traditional corporations to start their own businesses.

“This study is personal. As entrepreneurs ourselves, we've craved the data to understand the full landscape of the startup marketplace,” said Rachel Zillner, Clutch Co-founder and CEO. “The power of this tracker isn’t just in the insights coming from the data, but also the sense of community entrepreneurs will feel seeing their journey validated. Recognizing the pain points as well as opportunities ahead helps empower our fellow entrepreneurs and those who want to support small businesses.”

Utilizing emotional segmentation data driven by BRANDthrō, the only AI research firm to score human emotion predictively and quantifiably, the Clutch Entrepreneur Tracker helps us better understand the emotional state of entrepreneurs. Providing precise, predictive, and quantifiable means of human understanding, these datasets predict how people feel and will behave, whereas behavioral datasets tell us how people act.

The Clutch Entrepreneur Tracker highlighted that while entrepreneurs are cutting back on overall spending in response to strong economic headwinds, the majority of respondents were optimistic about growth. Other top insights include:

Entrepreneurs are split on their priority investment areas by generation, with Millennial and Gen Z entrepreneurs focused on technological advancement, and Boomers and Gen X concentrated on results and impact.
East Coast entrepreneurs are especially bullish about their prospects as compared to their peers in the West.
Respondents cited a reliance on fintech platforms for digital commerce as one of the top 3 areas they are emotionally engaged with that would help them better run their business.
For the entire sample, the most emotionally relevant reason for being an entrepreneur was raising the standard of living and helping create economic independence for all.
Entrepreneurs are prioritizing marketing and technology for discretionary spending. As the economy improves, they will look to invest in R&D efforts and team perks.
The most pressing challenges are retaining talent, capturing awareness, and finding a sense of community.

Learn more about the study, gain access to the full report, and sign up for future notifications here: Clutch Entrepreneur Tracker

About the Clutch Entrepreneur Tracker

Launched in celebration of Small Business Week 2024, the Clutch Entrepreneur Tracker establishes a quarterly index highlighting the sustainability, growth, and emotional sentiment of entrepreneurs in the U.S. The study was conducted by BRANDthrō and funded by Clutch, both women-owned, women-led organizations dedicated to providing insight and opportunities for mobility to small business owners everywhere.

Entrepreneurs at heart and co-founders of Clutch, Rachel Zillner and Anne Descalzo, seek to empower those following the same path of optimism and innovation, redefining what the workplace should be and reintroducing the human element. Evolving from a team of two into 150 professionals dedicated to elevating workplace culture and expert consulting through a human-centered design, Anne and Rachel incorporate purpose and intentionality in all they do. Today, their portfolio includes Frequency Coworking, a space that redefines the conventional workspace, and MinervaVerse, a venture fund dedicated to breaking barriers and advocating inclusivity for female and marginalized entrepreneurs by offering business incubator and accelerator support.

Methodology

BRANDthrō’s direct consumer response-based, data-scientific approach to emotional scoring is unique in its use of both primary AND secondary emotions, not just sentiment analysis or pure biometric outputs.

The proprietary data science used enables sample sizes of 100 per audience segment predictive of a population. The insights inform what matters most to whom and the experiences and language to drive action. The sample for the Entrepreneur Tracker was cut across generations, genders, and regions.

Learn more about the technology and approach to AI research: https://brandthro.ai/learn-more/