Tom Willis is an award-winning marketing leader and Co-founder of Lawpath. Tom’s journey journey includes steering several entrepreneurial projects and addressing the unique challenges faced by small businesses. As the Chief Marketing Officer at Lawpath, Tom has been pivotal in shaping the company’s marketing strategy and business growth.
The Lawpath Business Index combines official government datasets with aggregated, anonymised insights from Lawpath’s own platform. This blended approach allows us to track business activity at both a national and a human level, offering a timely and detailed view of Australia’s entrepreneurial landscape.
Data Sources
We use three core data sources:
- Australian Business Register (ABR) – ABN Bulk Extract
Used to count new Australian Business Numbers (ABNs) each month, including state, postcode, GST status, and entity type. This is the most comprehensive national dataset for all business structures. - Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) – Company Registration Statistics
The official monthly count of new Australian Company Numbers (ACNs), used as the benchmark for company registrations. - Lawpath platform data
Aggregated and anonymised insights from businesses registered through Lawpath, including:- Founder age ranges
- Gender
- Place of birth
- Broad industry categories
How We Process the Data
- ABN registrations – Count all ABNs with an active status and a registration date within the month. Use postcode and state fields to map geographic trends.
- ACN registrations – Use ASIC’s monthly totals as the official count for new companies.
- GST registrations – Count the number of businesses registering for GST in the month, regardless of formation date, as an indicator of trading activity.
- Lawpath insights – Analyse our registration data to show demographic and industry patterns. Less common responses are grouped as “Other” to protect privacy.
- Comparisons over time – Compare the same month year-on-year to highlight growth or contraction trends.
Limitations
- Registration address ≠ trading address – The address recorded may not be where the business operates.
- Broad industry categories – Categories are simplified for comparison across datasets.
- Demographic scope – Lawpath demographic insights reflect our customer base, not all businesses nationally.
Future Insights
The Index will continue to evolve and add new layers of analysis, including:
- Business name trends – Tracking the most common and fastest-rising words, themes, and styles in business names.
- Entrepreneur demographics – Deep dives into:
- Age trends in business formation
- Gender balance in entrepreneurship
- Cultural diversity based on anonymised place of birth data
- Geographic distribution of founders and their businesses
- Seasonal patterns – Analysing the impact of economic cycles, events, and policy changes on business creation.
- Geographic hotspots – Identifying suburbs, towns, and regions with the highest growth rates.
Contact
For any questions about the methodology, please reach out to our team at [email protected] .
