Where is Shopify Valley? Mapping Inclusion in the Uptake of Low-Code Entrepreneurship Across US Neighborhoods

The advent of the Internet changed the face of commerce and enabled technology-savvy individuals to build ventures that have challenged incumbent firms, as well as altered the geographic distribution of entrepreneurial activity. Recent developments continue to alter the techno-economic resources required to launch new ventures. Low-code tools, such as Shopify, afford ready-made technical tools that support robust e-commerce operations by laypersons, yet their broader impact on entrepreneurship is not yet understood. Do these tools alter entrepreneurial access? Do they facilitate the uptake of entrepreneurship by currently underrepresented groups? We undertake an abductive approach to these questions. Specifically, we document where Shopify-based ventures are located as a way of understanding who takes advantage of a low-code tool. The analysis draws on detailed economic and demographic information for all 32,000 neighborhood ZIP codes in the USA and the 160,000 Shopify-based e-commerce ventures operating therein. We find that low-code tools reshape entrepreneurial access; increasing the inclusion of neighborhoods with socio-demographic profiles that have been historically underrepresented in entrepreneurship, specifically neighborhoods with more Black residents