1. Remote work, no code, social media, and ecommerce platforms all make it easier to bootstrap new businesses from zero to revenue
2. (From Wikipedia) Mittelstand commonly refers to a group of stable business enterprises in Germany, Austria and Switzerland that have proved successful in enduring economic change and turbulence. The term is difficult to translate and may cause confusion for non-Germans. It is usually defined as a statistical category of small and medium-sized enterprises with annual revenues up to 50 million Euro and a maximum of 500 employees
3. There are hundreds of YC-backed startups stuck at ~$1M revenue that can predictably grow to $10M+ revenue with the right team and funding structure
4. Many VC-backed startups would be better as Mittelstands
5. My first business, Avomeen, is a classic Mittelstand
6. Mittelstands are already about one-third of our whole economy
7. Mittelstands can launch and get profitable for <$1M
The original article uses the plural too, Mittelstands, but it sounds really weird in German since it's more of mass noun (it's as if you referred to various pots of sugar as 'the sugars'). I believe the correct word would be Mittelständler, but if you're going to anglicize it, Mittelstanders would much better than Mittelstands in my opinion. Then again, I'm not a native speaker of either German or English...
the "-stand" comes from the German word for "estate" in the medieval sense [1]. It's typically translated with small- and medium-sized enterprises, which is also the lingo used at EU level. As you said, it's a mass noun, so if you want to refer to an individual enterprise belonging to the "Mittelstand," you'd effectively use it as an adjective and speak of e.g. a Mittlestand firm.
How would you call a person belonging to the Mittelstand in German? In another Germanic language, Dutch, you would say "middenstander" (or plural"middenstanders"), derived from "middenstand".
Oh yeah, if we talk about a person, like the business owner or founder, I'd use Mittelständler and if I desperately tried to anglicize it to Mittelstander
1. Remote work, no code, social media, and ecommerce platforms all make it easier to bootstrap new businesses from zero to revenue
2. (From Wikipedia) Mittelstand commonly refers to a group of stable business enterprises in Germany, Austria and Switzerland that have proved successful in enduring economic change and turbulence. The term is difficult to translate and may cause confusion for non-Germans. It is usually defined as a statistical category of small and medium-sized enterprises with annual revenues up to 50 million Euro and a maximum of 500 employees
3. There are hundreds of YC-backed startups stuck at ~$1M revenue that can predictably grow to $10M+ revenue with the right team and funding structure
4. Many VC-backed startups would be better as Mittelstands
5. My first business, Avomeen, is a classic Mittelstand
6. Mittelstands are already about one-third of our whole economy
7. Mittelstands can launch and get profitable for <$1M