Читать книгу The New Builders - Seth Levine - Страница 10

The definition of success in America today is increasingly corporate, built around the concepts of growth, size, and consumption. Big companies – large in terms of revenue, profits, and mindshare – frame the way we think about what is important and powerful. But our current overweening love affair with big poses a fundamental problem for America and what has been our uniquely dynamic economy. In this environment, entrepreneurship is dying. We've lost touch with the critical part of our society that is created by smaller businesses, which are responsible for much of our innovation and dynamism, most of the job growth, and produce nearly half of US Gross Domestic Product. Where entrepreneurship is thriving, it is so narrowly, among brash, young, typically White and male, technology company founders on their way to becoming big.

The needs of most entrepreneurs and small business owners are increasingly being overlooked and, as a result, they are being left behind in the economy and left out of the conversation. Entrepreneurship in the United States has declined over the last 40 years. As we narrow our definition of entrepreneurship, we narrow our opportunities and limit our economy.

It doesn't have to be this way.

The future is always coming to life somewhere. Luckily for us, we happened to be witness to it.

In the summer of 2019, we – Seth Levine, a venture capitalist, and Elizabeth MacBride, a business journalist – set out to tell the stories of entrepreneurs beyond the high‐tech enclaves we both know well. What did entrepreneurs look like in the middle of America and in communities outside the halo of traditional technology startup hotbeds?

What we discovered surprised us. The next generation of entrepreneurs doesn't look anything like past generations, and defies the popular image of an “entrepreneur” as a young, white founder, building a technology company. In fact, almost the opposite is true. Increasingly, our next generation of entrepreneurs are Black, brown, female, and over 40. They are more likely to be building a business on Main Street than in Silicon Valley. They typically start businesses based on their passions and rooted in their communities. In many cases, they are building businesses in areas left behind after the uneven recovery that followed the Great Recession of 2008–2009.

In this book we tell the stories of a wide range of entrepreneurs, from a man who revitalized an entire community through sheer stubbornness, to a family of guides in the Montana wilderness, to the first chocolatier in Arkansas, to a baker for the Dominican community of Massachusetts.

We call these entrepreneurs New Builders. They are the future of America's entrepreneurial legacy. This book tells their stories and explains the financial systems and power networks that must change if we are to help them succeed.

Yet, when we took our initial findings to our peers in the worlds of venture capital and journalism, people didn't believe us. They thought, based on what they saw about entrepreneurs in the news, that entrepreneurship in the United States was thriving. Most people have missed the fundamental changes that are taking place in our entrepreneurial landscape. As the people starting businesses have changed, our systems of finance and mentorship have failed to keep up. For the first time in history, the majority of entrepreneurs don't look like either the past generation of entrepreneurs or the people who control the capital and systems of support that are enablers of entrepreneurship.

New Builders are a diverse group, but they share one trait: they don't fit the mold of corporate success. In a business world that increasingly values conformity, New Builders defy it.

But being overlooked is a superpower of New Builders. Because of racism, sexism, and ageism, or because they saw ways to create new systems outside the ones they couldn't change, many New Builders turned to entrepreneurship – starting businesses and creating successful lives on their own terms. They often start businesses based on their values, and they are unusually resilient, possessing an extra dose of grit and determination.

New Builders are disconnected from the systems that accelerate new businesses and propel business growth. Those systems were built for past generations of entrepreneurs. New Builders are undercapitalized, and when they try to access networks that control capital, they often face systemic racism and sexism.

Entrepreneurs have been the bedrock of American business since before our country was founded, and entrepreneurship is deeply rooted in our country's history. Entrepreneurs were the women and men who explored and settled the vastness of the United States, and who built the infrastructure that stitched it all together – from rail, to industry, to the internet, to the goods and services needed for our everyday lives. But unlike past generations of entrepreneurs, who upended yesterday's big companies, today's New Builders don't have the support they need to be the dynamic engine of our economy. The Covid‐19 pandemic unfolded while we were in the midst of writing The New Builders, accelerating trends already in motion and bringing the harsh reality of our country's declining economic dynamism to the surface. When the final numbers are tallied, we will have lost millions more small businesses from what was already a shrinking base.

But New Builders' optimism is infectious, and their success in the face of obstacles gives us hope for the future of small companies and their crucial role in the American economy. In The New Builders, we argue for a better future. One that celebrates and supports the next generation of entrepreneurs and creates a more dynamic, egalitarian, and equitable society.

Our economic future lies in some surprising places – surprising only because we cling to a mistaken narrative of entrepreneurship. America needs a resurgence of these small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit they embody, especially as we emerge from the Covid‐19 economic crisis. Renewal and change come to life in small companies – from Main Streets to office parks, from kitchen tables to back‐alley garages.

In The New Builders, we call for a new mission that embraces the next generation of American entrepreneurs. Just as Silicon Valley was born out of a national mission to embrace mid‐twentieth‐century innovation and expand democracy's reach around the world, so too must we come together to build a network of support for our next generation of entrepreneurs. New Builders will play a critical role in helping rebuild communities, and in so doing will help bring forth a new vision for the United States. New Builders are not add‐ons to our mental map of business in the United States. They are the map.

In our time meeting and interviewing New Builders, we found compelling examples of new networks and support structures springing up across the country. But those efforts need to be expanded, and too many focus on changing New Builders to adapt to the existing system, rather than on adapting the system itself.

New Builders are the bedrock of the economy and the strongest part of the fabric that holds our communities together. Individually, they are strong; together, they are mighty. Their resolve – and ours – was tested in 2020 and 2021 as the pandemic raged across the country. This resolve will continue to be challenged. In this book, you will meet many New Builders and in doing so, gain a glimpse into the future of American business.

Our focus is on the amazing individuals we call the New Builders. Their stories offer hope and promise. Their passion, dedication, and grit inspire. We hope The New Builders makes you think differently about entrepreneurship, about the businesses you support, and about the policies that help drive our economy. Perhaps this book will invite you to consider the role you might play in supporting New Builders in your community.

Fundamentally, this book describes the urgent need for those with power in our society to change their thinking and their actions. We all benefit by creating a more robust society where a greater number of people have access to the capital and know‐how necessary to create and grow businesses.

Most of all, we hope this book inspires you with the potential for our shared future.

–Seth Levine

–Elizabeth MacBride