Research
Field researchfrom Stepsmith.
Short briefs on the inner-city trade economy: market demand signals, buyer pipelines, and what the cohort intake looks like on the ground — city by city.
Why Detroit launches Stepsmith — and what the cohort looks like.
A short research brief from the Stepsmith team on why Detroit is the inaugural market, what the local demand signal reads, and how the first rolling cohort lines up against it.
Stepsmith7 min read
Read more →Detroit trades baseline: demand is real; capital is the bottleneck.
A research brief on Detroit skilled-trades demand, the working-capital gap facing small operators, and the buyer channels worth preparing for.
Stepsmith9 min read
Read more →What's next
Apply to the Detroitintake.
Detroit cohorts run on a rolling quarterly cadence — six to twelve founder-apprentices every quarter. Five fields, two regulated disclosures, and one paragraph on the trade you want to scale.
Apply
Trade, city, one paragraph — that's all the intake needs to start.
Program lead reviews every submission within five business days.