Find closed businesses on maps: fixing bad counts.
To find closed businesses on maps, search for specific names you remember and check the official register. Broad searches often hide closed places. When numbers are tiny or unclear, record them honestly and use them as a reason to talk to survivors.
When you cannot find closed businesses on maps.
Map apps often skip closed places in broad searches. So search a specific name you remember, or look along a street you know well. Then check the official register, because it records closures the map may hide. If your business type is too new, widen the area to the nearest city or the whole country.
If there is still nothing, write that down. However, it means you are flying without an outside view.
Tiny numbers and unclear closures.
Two openings and one closure is a small sample size problem, because one closure swings the ratio wildly. It is not a verdict. Instead, walk in and talk to the surviving owners. Also, a closure might really be a sale, a move or a retirement. When unsure, count it as closed with a question mark.
Online niches and frightening ratios.
If you sell online, your street is the platform. So research competitors in an online niche by finding shops or accounts that went quiet or closed. Treat that as softer evidence. Finally, if the ratio scares you off, look at what the closed businesses shared. Sometimes you can avoid it, but sometimes it is the business itself.
Find closed businesses on maps the reliable way.
Search three closed business names you remember and check each one in your official register.
Mark every unclear closure with a question mark beside your count.
From the book.
Your type of business is too new to have local examples. Widen the area to the nearest city or the whole country, and if there's still nothing, write that down. A market with no track record isn't automatically bad, but it means nobody can give you an outside view, and you should know that you're flying without one.
I Want to Start a Business but I'm a Coward, chapter 7: When the coward is right
Questions about find closed businesses on maps.
Why can't I find closed businesses on maps?
Broad searches often hide closed places. Search specific names or check the official register instead.
What if a closure was really a sale?
Check the register for a new owner at that address, or ask a neighbouring business.
What if the ratio frightens me off completely?
First look at what the closed businesses had in common, since sometimes it is avoidable.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 7, “When the coward is right”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Knowing when to quit a startup: why it is a skill.
- 02 Entrepreneur overconfidence bias: who is most wrong.
- 03 Scientific method for startups: let evidence decide.
- 04 Business closure rate in my area: count it yourself.
- 05 Aquinas on courage: why too little fear is a mistake.
- 06 Find closed businesses on maps: fixing bad counts.
- 07 When to abandon a business idea: a four-second lesson.