The Financial Access Initiative at NYU Wagner launched the Small Firm Diaries to better understand a specific group of small businesses: firms in low-income neighborhoods around the world with at least one and no more than 20 non-family, paid workers. These are referred to as “small firms” to distinguish them from “microenterprises,” which traditionally have no paid workers beyond immediate family members. The analysis below focuses on firms in Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Indonesia.