The Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) is a panel study of 4,928 businesses founded in 2004 and tracked over their early years of operation, through 2011. The survey focuses on the nature of new business formation activity; characteristics of firm strategy and innovation, offerings; employment patterns; the nature of the financing (sources and amounts); organizational arrangements of the firms; outcomes such as sales, profits, and survival; and the characteristics of the founders.

The Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED) research program is designed to enhance the scientific understanding of how people start businesses. The projects provides data on the process of business formation based on nationally-representative samples of nascent entrepreneurs, those active in business creation. PSED I began with screening in 1998-2000 and three follow-up interviews. PSED II began with screening in 2005-2006, followed by six yearly interviews. The information obtained includes data on the nature of those active as nascent entrepreneurs, the activities undertaken during the start-up process, and the characteristics of start-up efforts that become new firms. Available through ICPSR.

BDS provides annual measures of business dynamics (such as job creation and destruction, establishment births and deaths, and firm startups and shutdowns) for the economy and aggregated by establishment and firm characteristics. The BDS is produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and currently covers the 1990s through present. Sector-level measures are available for the United States as a whole, and overall measures are available by state. The Census Bureau provides the same data through a different interface (google to find it)

Comprehensive public data on minority-owned businesses in the United States from 2002-2012 (spanning three data sets: 2002, 2007, 2012). This web-based information platform provides searchable access to all of the data used in the “The State of Minority Business Enterprises: An Overview of the 2012 Survey of Business Owners” report. It includes both minority- and nonminority-owned businesses.

GALI builds on the Entrepreneurship Database Program at Emory University, which works with dozens of accelerators to collect standardized data during the application process. Then it follows up with annual surveys for all the entrepreneurs who applied to these programs, including those that were accelerated and those that were not. This helps create a deep understanding of how accelerators affect the growth of entrepreneurs over time. learn more about the type of applications that accelerators receive. Filter by geography, sector, gender, and more. The data come from more than 280 programs that operated between 2013 and 2018.

GEM is a consortium of national country teams, primarily associated with top academic institutions, that carries out survey-based research on entrepreneurship around the world. GEM collects data on entrepreneurship directly from individual entrepreneurs.
GEM’s Adult Population Survey provides analysis on the characteristics, motivations and ambitions of individuals starting businesses, as well as social attitudes towards entrepreneurship. The National Expert Survey (NES) looks at the national context in which individuals start businesses.

Find SBA data resources and APIs that are available to the public.

The Survey of Business Owners (SBO) provides the only comprehensive, regularly collected source of information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and business owners by gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status.

GEM is a research network that offers news, free global and national surveys, and a searchable collection of academic papers based on GEMs data. Datasets are available by subscription.
GEM is the only global research source that collects data on entrepreneurship directly from individual entrepreneurs! GEM’s Adult Population Survey provides analysis on the characteristics, motivations and ambitions of individuals starting businesses, as well as social attitudes towards entrepreneurship. The National Expert Survey (NES) looks at the national context in which individuals start businesses