TAMPA, Fla., April 28. Hispanic and Latino entrepreneurs accounted for nearly 36 percent of new business filings in Florida over the past two years, placing them within four percentage points of white founders and on track to overtake them in the coming year, according to a research analysis released Monday by the lead-generation platform DayOneLead.
The analysis, drawn from a random sample of approximately 45,000 Florida limited liability company filings, indicates that Florida's small-business formation engine is materially more diverse than is typically reflected in state economic statistics. White founders accounted for 40.07 percent of the sample, Hispanic and Latino owners for 35.96 percent, Black American owners for 7.71 percent, owners with Middle Eastern or North African names for 3.49 percent, and Jewish owners for 2.82 percent. Indian-subcontinent owners accounted for 1.49 percent, East Asian owners for 1.55 percent, and Sub-Saharan African owners for 1.45 percent.
Roughly 60 percent of new Florida LLC filings carried owner names suggesting a non-white founder.
Together, the findings imply that Florida's nearly 200,000 annual new-LLC filings include roughly 72,000 founded by Hispanic and Latino owners and roughly 15,400 founded by Black American owners, figures that exceed several existing state-level minority-business reporting frameworks.
Cultural origin breakdown
Rounded to the nearest percentage point, the sample comprised 36 percent Hispanic and Latino, 8 percent Black American, 3.5 percent Middle Eastern and North African, 2.8 percent Jewish, 1.5 percent Indian, 1.5 percent East Asian, and 1.5 percent Sub-Saharan African owners. Smaller cohorts included South Asian (Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Nepali), Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander, Indigenous American, and mixed-origin founders.
Annual extrapolation
Florida averages approximately 200,000 new LLC filings per year, according to filing-date distributions in the Sunbiz registry. Applying the percentages from the random sample to that annual baseline produces the following estimates of yearly filings by founder cultural origin:
- Approximately 80,000 white-founded filings per year
- Approximately 72,000 Hispanic and Latino filings per year
- Approximately 15,400 Black American filings per year
- Approximately 7,000 Middle Eastern and North African filings per year
- Approximately 5,600 Jewish filings per year
- Approximately 3,100 East Asian filings per year
- Approximately 3,000 Indian filings per year
- Approximately 2,900 Sub-Saharan African filings per year
Smaller cohorts and approximately 4 percent of filings classified as non-personal text (limited liability company names without an obvious individual owner, abbreviations, or owner fields the classifier could not confidently parse) account for the balance.
Gender
Among the sampled names, 59.79 percent were classified as male, 36.22 percent as female, and 3.99 percent as inconclusive. The inconclusive category covered non-personal LLC names and unisex first names where the classifier declined to commit. Extrapolated to a full year, the sample implies approximately 72,000 women-founded LLC filings in Florida annually, which would represent one of the largest single-state datasets of new women-founded businesses captured at filing time anywhere in the United States.
Significance
The findings carry implications for several areas of state and federal policy.
State and local economic-development data have historically relied on self-reported certifications, business-survey panels, or post-hoc address-based modeling to estimate minority-business-formation rates. The DayOneLead analysis draws directly from registry records on the day of filing, which yields a baseline materially less subject to participation bias than certification-based counts. The Black American founder estimate of approximately 15,400 filings per year, in particular, exceeds figures reported by several existing minority-business reporting frameworks, which the methodology section addresses further.
Hispanic and Latino founders, on the present trajectory, are positioned to overtake white founders as Florida's largest single new-business cohort during the coming year. That crossover would mark the first major U.S. state in which Hispanic and Latino owners file the largest plurality of new LLCs in any twelve-month period.
Methodology
The research draws on a random sample of approximately 45,000 Florida LLC filings recorded between May 2024 and April 2026 in the state's Sunbiz registry, restricted to filings carrying a non-empty registered owner-name field. Each owner name was processed by the deepseek-chat large language model under a fixed prompt requesting one of fourteen cultural-origin labels and one of three gender labels, plus a confidence rating per field.
The fourteen cultural-origin labels were: Hispanic/Latino, East Asian, Indian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, MENA, Jewish, Sub-Saharan African, Black American, White, Indigenous American, Pacific Islander, Mixed/Multiple, and Unclear (reserved for non-personal text such as LLC names and abbreviations).
Cultural-origin classifications are generated from name-pattern analysis only and are treated as estimates rather than determinations of identity. The methodology has known limitations. Many Black Americans hold Anglicized surnames inherited generationally, which the classifier can identify as Black American only when paired with a culturally distinctive first name. The Black American cohort is therefore likely undercounted in the sample. Similar limitations apply at smaller magnitudes to other cohorts whose surnames may have been Anglicized over generations.
A sample of this size produces a margin of error below 1 percent at 95 percent confidence on state-level cohort percentages.
Data availability
A random sample of 1,000 high-confidence classifications is available for download as a comma-separated values file:
Download the data sample (CSV)
The file includes business name, city, business category, filing date, and the model's cultural-origin and gender labels. Individual owner names are intentionally omitted to avoid attaching inferred ethnicity labels to identifiable individuals. The business-name field is included as it is already a public-record element of the Sunbiz filing.
About DayOneLead
DayOneLead is a business-lead-generation platform that ingests state business-registration filings on a daily basis, enriches each filing with verified owner contact information, and delivers the resulting datasets to subscribers. Florida is the most comprehensively covered state in the platform's dataset.
For custom data cuts, journalists and researchers may contact research@dayonelead.com.
Footnote on extrapolation. The random sample of approximately 45,000 names was drawn from a population of roughly 393,000 in-scope Florida LLC filings (any filing with a non-empty owner-name field) over the two-year window. Annual filing volume of approximately 200,000 is taken from the dataset's filing-date distribution. Applying the sample's percentages to the annual baseline produces the per-cohort estimates shown above. The sample size is statistically more than sufficient for state-level cohort percentages: a one-percentage-point margin at 95 percent confidence requires approximately 10,000 observations.