Small Business Owners Should Maintain Their ‘Wild Optimism’: Alexandra Rosen, Global Head of GoDaddy Small Business Research Lab Posted on February 9, 2026February 8, 2026 By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant (small.news) — Our small.talk series continued on Jan. 28, 2026, with Alexandra Rosen, Economist and Global Head of GoDaddy Small Business Research Lab. Her conversation with Silver Lining CEO Carissa Reiniger focused on how small business owners should utilize technology to their advantage. Q: Can you just tell us how you got to GoDaddy? A: I come from a big business background. I was at Google. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t fully appreciate the impact of small businesses until I learned about this initiative that started in 2018 at GoDaddy. So a lot of times, the first moment an idea feels real to someone or a business, they go and look up the domain, and then they launch a website. GoDaddy thought, what if there’s something we can do with this information? If we better understand and see these small and micro businesses, then we can support them better. I joined the team in 2019. We began by looking at over 20 million micro businesses across the United States, and really looking at where they are down to the zip code, how they’re growing, what’s on their mind in terms of challenges, motivations, etc. Top Stories Your Business is Worth More Than You Think — If You Know Your Numbers A wave of small business ownership transfers is coming. Here’s how to make sure yours doesn’t get left behind. Based on a session delivered by Brit Karel, co-founder of SMB.co Philippine SMEs Ride a Wave of Confidence Into 2026 Building on these positive indicators, Philippine small businesses are entering 2026 on a high note, according to CPA Australia’s latest Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey. You’re Building Your Business on Borrowed Land A small-business owner in Kingston, Jamaica, gained over 20k Instagram followers, boosted engagement, and increased sales. Then, without warning, an algorithm update cut her content’s visibility, causing sales to drop. This shows how relying solely on social media puts your business at risk. Q: What is something that is ignored in conversations about the economy? A: My take comes back to data. I don’t think it’s for a lack of any kind of intent or even care, as much as opportunity. In the past, it’s been hard to capture true entrepreneurial activity in a timely fashion. I think it is easier with the stock market, because we can look at it day to day, and we feel we have a sense, insight, and visibility into things that are moving. With small businesses, those results might be lagging a year or just even longer, or maybe they weren’t fully captured at the time. I think thanks to technology, people are taking their ideas online, which can happen in minutes now, whether with GoDaddy or someone else Technology, when looked at as a tool, now enables us to have timely insights. Q: Why do you care about this work? A: It really blends heart and head for me. I am such a proponent, and this is why I love working at GoDaddy, working on missions that empower others. I’ve become a small business owner myself with my husband and with a brick-and-mortar location as well. So it matters to me personally and professionally. Again, I think it’s right in the sense that we have done so much work, and we have some new work coming out soon, showing that small businesses are a strong economic indicator. For years, we’ve shown, again, their impact on jobs, etc., but they actually are an indicator of what’s to come short-term and potentially long-term. Q: What are you worried about for small businesses? A: I want them to maintain their wild optimism. I think sometimes the doubts can creep in or short-term can eclipse longer term view and their heart with doubts. I want the imminent tough conditions to maintain their optimism while being realistic about the steps it takes. So getting whatever support they need or insight they need to navigate the short-term so they can stay committed in the long-term to what they truly want to be doing. Q: What’s the biggest opportunity? A: I would say technology and continuing with technology. Access to the internet has lowered barriers to information reaching customers. Websites have done that. We now have the tool of AI. So, for example, GoDaddy’s Airo platform allows a user to turn an idea into a website in minutes. We see people are using it. Business insights, content, customer service. There’s, there are so many things it can save time with to date. I truly believe that’s a real opportunity right now. Q: What do you think is the most interesting thing GoDaddy thinks that small businesses should take advantage of? A: I would say Airo is a huge one. It is the AI-powered platform we released. You can go to GoDaddy and type in an idea, and it can help you generate a logo, generate a website in minutes, like full content, suggested imagery. It can save you so much of the decision fatigue and time, so you have something to react to. Again, from idea to execution in minutes, a placeholder site. I think it’s incredible. Q: You’ve got this Magic Silver Wand. You could make one change right now. What would you use it for with all the knowledge you have? A: I’d want to make small businesses more visible in every economic conversation. Q: Alex, how do we either learn more about your work or support you? A: So one way is learn about what we do on godaddy.com/research. We just published an annual report. And it’s really good, by the way. We have a lot of data visualizations, a lot of key highlights in there. So, absolutely try to make it friendly to anyone at whatever level or level of familiarity you have with small business research. We have a LinkedIn newsletter that we publish monthly. And we wanted to make it even easier and conversational to interact with our data. So we have two custom GPTs on ChatGPT. So if you go to research.godaddy.com/GPT or research.godaddy.com/data, you can conversationally interact with all our reports or our actual data within the United States, of which states have grown the most in the number of small businesses, compare different cities, so, anything like that. So we welcome usage, feedback, and hopefully, that information is useful to support anyone supporting small businesses. So that’s a great way to keep up with us. Do you want to shop small? Check out our new buy.small Marketplace! Latest Stories
Your Business is Worth More Than You Think — If You Know Your Numbers A wave of small business ownership transfers is coming. Here’s how to make sure yours doesn’t get left behind. Based on a session delivered by Brit Karel, co-founder of SMB.co
Philippine SMEs Ride a Wave of Confidence Into 2026 Building on these positive indicators, Philippine small businesses are entering 2026 on a high note, according to CPA Australia’s latest Asia-Pacific Small Business Survey.
You’re Building Your Business on Borrowed Land A small-business owner in Kingston, Jamaica, gained over 20k Instagram followers, boosted engagement, and increased sales. Then, without warning, an algorithm update cut her content’s visibility, causing sales to drop. This shows how relying solely on social media puts your business at risk.