For municipalities
Become the city that's easy to open a business in.
OpenShop gives entrepreneurs a clearer path to opening day while giving your staff greater visibility and more capacity to support them.
Opening delays don't just affect entrepreneurs. They affect communities.
More businesses reach opening day
A clearer process helps more entrepreneurs successfully navigate the path from location to opening.
Entrepreneurs earn sooner
Every unnecessary delay keeps an entrepreneur paying expenses before serving their first customer.
Stronger commercial districts
Businesses that open activate storefronts, create jobs, generate economic activity, and give people more reasons to spend locally.
One opening journey. Many teams supporting it.
OpenShop helps connect the information entrepreneurs need across the departments involved in opening a local business.
Economic Development
Help more prospective businesses successfully reach opening day.
Planning & Zoning
Help entrepreneurs understand location requirements earlier—before costly commitments are made.
Commerce & Business Services
Give entrepreneurs consistent answers and a clearer path through local requirements.
Mayor's Office
Turn support for small business into a visible, measurable economic-development priority.
Help entrepreneurs get it right before mistakes get expensive.
Too often, entrepreneurs reach city staff after they've signed a lease, started a buildout, or made assumptions about what a location allows. By then, a simple question can become an expensive mistake.
OpenShop brings local requirements into the journey earlier—helping business owners understand what they need to know before making major commitments.
Understand location requirements earlier
Surface zoning, use, permitting, and other considerations before entrepreneurs get too far down the road.
Start better prepared
Help applicants understand requirements and gather what they need before reaching city staff.
Prevent avoidable friction
Reduce the incomplete applications, wrong turns, and late-stage surprises that slow businesses and staff down.
Extend your capacity—not your headcount.
A better entrepreneur experience
Give business owners a clear, personalized path through requirements that can otherwise feel overwhelming.
Consistent guidance
Give entrepreneurs one reliable source of information across departments.
Guidance at scale
Give every entrepreneur access to clear, city-specific guidance without requiring one-on-one staff support.
Cross-department coordination
Connect planning, zoning, permitting, licensing, health, fire, and other parts of the opening journey.
Pipeline visibility
See what businesses are trying to open, where they are in the process, and where they're getting stuck.
Insights into friction
Identify recurring bottlenecks, questions, and delays so you know where the process can improve.
And because OpenShop guides entrepreneurs directly, your team can spend less time answering the same questions and more time solving the ones that actually require their expertise.
YOU CAN'T IMPROVE WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE
Give local entrepreneurship a metric that matters.
Time to First Customer™ measures the journey from the search for a location to serving the first customer.
OpenShop helps municipalities understand what happens along that journey, where businesses lose time, and where better guidance or processes could help them move forward.
Searching for a Location
Search and identify a viable site
Approvals
Zoning, permits, and planning
Licenses
State, county, and city licenses
Inspections
Fire, health, and building
Open
Doors unlocked
🟢 First Customer
Revenue begins
Shorten Time to First Customer, and entrepreneurs start earning sooner—while communities start benefiting sooner.
Help shape the future of local business support.
OpenShop is currently in development. We're looking for forward-thinking municipalities to help us build a better way for entrepreneurs to navigate the path to opening—and for cities to support them along the way.
Become an Early Partner