A majority of today's small businesses are not sustainable either. Isn't it something in the range of 85% of small businesses fail after a handful of years?
That was an interesting thought. I had to look at the numbers a bit. In Sweden in 2012 69,216 companies where created [1]. In all of 2012 7,471 companies were declared bankrupt [2], about 10%. If 85% fail, then another 75% should have shut down voluntarily. That is out of 1.1 million companies of which 888,000 had some turnover last year [3], Can't find the statistics for the year on year growth though right now.
Edit: found the stats. Seems the number of companies have only grown by 10% in total or so in six years [4]. So maybe you are right then.
Not all small businesses are intended to be sustainable. Let's say I start a company in order to bill my freelance clients, but 2 years later I get a job and shut down the company (which never had recurring revenue as I was just selling my own services). That would show up in those figures.
So would a company which was set up to operate, say, a restaurant. If the company sold the assets (lease, fixtures & fittings etc.) to another individual or company, so that the owner could move to another country or start and run a different business, that would also look like a small business failure, even if the guy lived well for those years and came out on top before moving on.
