The Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) is a panel study of 4,928 businesses founded in 2004 and tracked over their early years of operation. The survey focuses on the nature of new business formation activity; characteristics of the strategy, offerings, and employment patterns of new businesses; the nature of the financial and organizational arrangements of these businesses; and the characteristics of their founders.
The Kauffman Firm Survey (KFS) is the largest longitudinal study of new businesses ever embarked upon. The panel of businesses was created by using a random sample from Dun & Bradstreet’s (D&B) database list of new businesses started in 2004, which totaled roughly two hundred fifty-thousand such businesses. The KFS oversampled these businesses based on the intensity of research and development employment in the businesses’ primary industries. The KFS sought to create a panel that included new businesses founded by a person or team of people, purchases of existing businesses by a new ownership team, and purchases of franchises. To this end, the KFS excluded D&B records for businesses that were wholly owned subsidiaries of existing businesses, businesses inherited from someone else, and not-for-profit organizations. Also, previous research on new businesses has reported variability in how business founders perceive when their businesses started operations.
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