Gawk CEO Talks Small Business

John Oliver of Last Week Tonight recently did a segment on frequently politicians say small business is the backbone of the American economy. In it, he built from Hillary Clinton to Sarah Palin to former President Barack Obama saying it. The video clip concluded with a grid of 16 congresspeople all reciting this well-worn comment. So it was funny that Gawk CEO, Scott Kettle used the exact same phrase in the company’s announcement about its recent and projected sales numbers.

But, the point is that this cloud-based infrastructure-as-a-service company sold 1.7 billion minutes to its business-to-business customers before the end of the third quarter. And it expects its sales to exceed 2.3 billion minutes by the end of 2017.

"Our revenue is based on the total amount of minutes we sell to small to-medium businesses in the United States,” said Kettle. “Small business is the backbone of America, and we contribute to their success, as well as ours, by making sure their messages are heard in the consumer markets.”

GAWK sells cloud communications, cloud computing, cloud connectivity, and managed cloud-based applications solutions to small, medium, and large businesses. It also provides domestic and international voice services to communications carriers worldwide.

There’s been a long-term decline in new business creation, according to several sources. CNN reports that U.S. entrepreneurship is near a 40-year low. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation says this trend has been ongoing since the 1980s. Oliver, meanwhile, referred to New York Times coverage saying it’s been on the decline since the 1970s.

But, the 2017 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity points to some positive developments on this front. "A three-year upward trend in new business formation is a promising sign for the economy," said Victor Hwang, vice president of Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation. "Recent research demonstrates that more startups lead to higher productivity, wage growth and quality of life.

“Growing startups not only support individual entrepreneurs but lift surrounding communities,” says Hwang. “We need to identify and remove barriers and contribute to a new model of economic development that infuses more entrepreneurship into the economy."

Edited by Mandi Nowitz