Posts by Mark Darwin
Small Business Hiring Slows While Pay Keeps Climbing
Small business hiring cooled again last month, according to the Gusto Small Business Jobs Report published September 3. Small employers added roughly 29,500 net new jobs in August on a seasonally adjusted basis, extending a streak that has now run seven straight months. If you have been staring at a job posting wondering whether to…
Read MoreLTL Freight: 5 Ways Merchants Cut Heavy Shipping Costs
ShipStation has pulled less-than-truckload shipping into its main platform, so small and mid-sized sellers can quote, book and track LTL freight in the same place they already handle boxes. If you sell anything heavy, that single change removes a tab you have been switching to for years. I used to tell founders that heavy products…
Read MoreWhy Startups Fail: Record Funding, Record Shutdowns
SimpleClosure, a firm that handles company wind downs, has published its shutdown data for the first half of 2026, and the picture is more useful than the headline suggests. Anyone asking why startups fail will find the answer sitting in a bank balance rather than in a market thesis. The data covers US companies the…
Read MoreMerchant of Record Push Opens Emerging Markets Faster
Payments company dLocal has launched dMoRe, a merchant of record service aimed at companies that want to sell into fast-growing consumer markets without opening an office there. The announcement landed on August 26, 2026, and it targets a bottleneck founders know intimately. Here is the growth angle. Most teams do not stall in a new…
Read MoreBuild vs Buy Flips as AI Lets Companies Ship In House
Roughly a third of organizations have turned down at least one software purchase and written the thing themselves with agentic coding tools, according to McKinsey’s latest global survey of business leaders. The build vs buy question, settled for most of the past decade in favor of buying, is open again. That matters to anyone selling…
Read MoreFraud Prevention Draws $156M as Socure Buys Fravity
A quiet corner of financial infrastructure just repriced, because Socure raised $156 million at a $5.2 billion valuation and acquired an AI startup on the same day. Summit Partners led the round, with Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Wells Fargo and Docusign participating. Numbers this large can feel remote from a ten-person company. The mechanics underneath are…
Read MoreAgentic Commerce: 5 Ways to Get Picked by AI Agents
Shopping agents stopped being a demo this year, and Google now completes checkout on merchant sites for shoppers through Search, AI Mode and Gemini. A buyer sets size, color and a price ceiling, then confirms once, and Google fills the cart and pays. Agentic commerce changes who you are selling to. Your next customer may…
Read MoreCEO Succession Planning: What Apple’s Handoff Shows
John Ternus becomes chief executive of Apple today, completing a transition the company announced back on April 20. Tim Cook moves to executive chair, and Art Levinson, previously chair of the board, becomes lead independent director on the same date. Most founders will never hand off a company this size, yet the choreography here is…
Read MoreEmployee Background Check Startup Yardstik Raises $30M
A Minneapolis company that screens workers has raised fresh growth capital, and Yardstik closed a $30 million round led by Harbert Growth Partners on August 27. The financing lifts the total capital to $65 million and funds a push beyond the traditional employee background check into ongoing monitoring. For founders, the relevant detail is not…
Read MoreSmall Business Grants 2026: Emigrant Bank Names Winners
Finding money to grow a small business is stressful, and it rarely feels fair. So it is worth pausing on some good news. Emigrant Bank has named the recipients of its 2026 Small Business Grants, backing local New York-area businesses and nonprofits. You may not bank with Emigrant, and that is fine. The real story…
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