Small Block

Where America Invests in Itself.

Decision-intelligence infrastructure for opportunity and risk, before capital moves and after.

What is the rural difference really worth?

4,173x
ceiling per dollar at 50,000 population
24x
ceiling per dollar, New York
About these numbers

Under OZ 2.0, a city or town over 50,000, and any urbanized area touching it, is not rural. Everything else is. Size sets it, not farmland or distance.

2020 Decennial Census, incorporated places, 19,481 incorporated places, ranked by population. Both axes use a log scale. 18,688 is an upper bound: some small places sit inside an urbanized area next to a larger city. Ceiling per dollar is how far a dollar could multiply if the place grew to hold every person counted. It is a ceiling, not a return.

If others tell you what’s true, Small Block helps you prove what ain’t false.

Our conviction: more capital will want to reach rural than there are people, projects, places and tools ready for it. That disconnect is the mispricing. We’d like to help you not be on the wrong side of it.

What we do

For: fund managers and general partners, capital raising teams, securities and fund formation counsel, tax counsel, tax compliance CPAs and fund administrators.

Gains to Ground

Realized capital gains: stock and other securities, real estate and business property, business or a partnership interest, crypto and collectibles, estates and trusts, installment-sale payments, as they arrive.

Your current financing options under a Qualified Rural Opportunity Zone deal are the baseline.

Place-Fit Capital

Which of the 2,594 rural tracts do you select?

Of the 60+ "rural" definitions across the federal government, where can public and private dollars be leveraged most effectively?

For investors seeking a return and communities seeking resilience, at what point does 'continuity' and 'liquidity' enter the conversation?

Have you asked if the data you are analyzing is biased, suppressed, skewed, flawed, masked, or actually describing where you’re looking?

Our mission

Tools for humans and machines working through uncertainty, and clarity on when to use letters, numbers, both, or neither.

Our Humble Beginnings 10 Years Ago

$1M
Non-dilutive grants to 20 new local startups. They created over 100 jobs and generated over $40M in revenue.
$100M+
with commercial real estate capital stack, public and philanthropic funding, and private investment.
90%
award rate on state and federal contracts and grants. Our work spans two-thirds of the acronyms of the federal alphabet: DHS, DOC, DOI, DOT, DOL, ED, HHS, HUD, USDA, VA (EDA, DRA, SBA).
Zero
audit findings.

Less about what you have. More about what you do with it, or without.