Читать книгу The New Builders - Seth Levine - Страница 14

Danaris, like many New Builders, didn't come to start and build a business from a whiteboard or as part of a class exercise. It was her lived experience, combined with the kind of motivation that comes from the knowledge that you're not going to succeed any other way – at least, not on the terms you want. Quiet but forceful, and fiercely proud of her culture, Danaris spent years putting other people before herself, including her husband and her children. Like the mother who inspired her, she knows how to carry on through tears. But in the company of people from cultures where tears are a sign of weakness, she also knows how to hold them back. If you passed her on the street, you might not give her a second look. You almost certainly wouldn't think this Dominican woman was a community leader and small business owner.

In today's economy, an estimated 60 million people are entrepreneurial in some way. There were 5.6 million employer firms in the United States in 2016, the last year for which complete data are available. If you include the number of “nonemployer” businesses (sole proprietorships – what we now like to call “solopreneurs”) this share goes up to 98 percent. Overlapping with these businesses are the 57 million Americans who freelanced in 2018 as part of the gig economy.¹

It's easy to underestimate the impact of grassroots entrepreneurs on the economy, especially in a country that's become consumed by a fast‐growth, high‐tech business narrative. But recent World Bank research found that it's almost impossible to predict which companies will eventually turn into “gazelles” – their term for firms that take off quickly, grow rapidly, and employ large numbers of people. High‐growth firms aren't just technology businesses (though some are). Nor are all startups in the classic sense. Rather, they are firms between one and five years old, and they're found in many sectors across our economy.² Likewise, important innovations are as likely to happen in Danaris's kitchen – the low‐calorie cake she's been playing around with, for example – or a lab in the Midwest, as in the head of a Silicon Valley computer coder.

Early data suggest that the number of entrepreneurs is growing in the midst of the Covid‐19 pandemic, as people become entrepreneurial out of necessity. As the pandemic started, the average small business had just two to four weeks of cash on hand, a fact that explains why so many folded (already numbering in the several million, as of the time of this writing).³ Our economy needs more New Builders.

If the past is any guide, unless something changes, fewer and fewer Americans will choose to become entrepreneurs after the pandemic aftereffect fades. The long‐term slowdown in new business activity contributes to the phenomenon of what one might describe as ghost startups – businesses that never got started because the founders didn't have the opportunity to get their ideas off the ground. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation calls them pre‐entrepreneurship leavers.⁴ We'll never know the names of these businesses, nor the impact they might have had on a local, national, or even global scale, unless we pause to recognize how many ghost startups our current economy is missing.ⁱⁱ

The startup rate in America, the share of companies zero to two years old, fell from more than 12 percent in 1980 to about 8 percent in 2015.⁵ Meanwhile, the number of people employed by small businesses – while still more than 40 percent of the workforce – fell by one‐third between 1987 and 2015. The Covid‐19 pandemic is exacerbating these trends and, at the same time, highlighting why small business entrepreneurship is so essential to our economy.

What we found as we interviewed dozens of entrepreneurs and small business owners – we use the terms almost interchangeably – across the United States is that several elements are merging to make it hard to be a New Builder.

The systemic racism, sexism, and ageism that pervades our culture means that today's entrepreneurs often don't get enough support. Our systems of capital and networks are dominated by White men, many of whom consciously or unconsciously look for other White men to invest in. But today's entrepreneurs are increasingly women and people of color. And many of our best entrepreneurs are older.

Consider:

 Women will soon make up more than half of all business owners in the United States because the rate at which women are starting businesses is growing at more than four times the rate of business starts overall. And women of color are responsible for 64 percent of the new women‐owned businesses being created, making them the fastest‐growing segment of business owners in the United States.

 The entrepreneurship rate in the United States has been driven by people of Hispanic origin, whose rate of entrepreneurship is almost twice that of the average of other groups.⁶ Immigrants, as well, are twice as likely as native‐born Americans to start businesses.

 The average age of the leaders of high‐growth startups is 45.⁷ And the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity in the United States is among people aged 55 to 64.⁸

Entrepreneurs can succeed in today's economy – you'll meet many in this book – but many are struggling because our business landscape has fundamentally changed. We find ourselves in an age dominated by big business and powered by software and the consumer movement. Our current business environment is driven by a pursuit for profit, above all else, and enforced by a government that, under both Democrats and Republicans, has increasingly shifted the rules of the game to favor size. Society has become obsessed with the ability to order any item at any time on demand, the convenience of everything under the sun being delivered to our front door, and the comfort of knowing that you can get the same coffee, burger, or taco in just about any large city in our country. We have started to devalue people who pick another path, who want to be producers, rather than consumers. Even among technology companies – which most perceive as thriving – fewer people are launching new businesses. Now is the time to focus on these changes and start to do something about them.

This long‐term decline in entrepreneurship has terrible implications for the health of our society. Twenty‐five years ago, a child born in the bottom 25 percent of the economic bracket had a 25 percent chance of making it into the top 25 percent. This was the basis for the American dream – through hard work, determination, and likely a bit of luck, anyone, regardless of the circumstances from which they came, could rise up the economic ladder. Today, someone born into the bottom 25 percent of the economic ladder has only a 5 percent chance of making it into the top 25 percent. The American dream is slipping away, and we're simply watching it happen.⁹