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Digital Entrepreneurship and the Rise of America’s Shadow Economy

September 23, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Something unprecedented is happening in the American economy—and it’s not being measured by the usual charts, reports, and government statistics. The rise of digital entrepreneurship has quietly created a new economic undercurrent, one powerful enough to reshape labor markets, redefine wealth creation, and challenge the way we think about “work.”

In 2023, Americans filed a record 5.5 million new business applications. By 2020, even before this wave, 2 million individuals were already making six figures or more directly from social media. Add in e-commerce platforms, subscription models, AI-assisted startups, and the ever-expanding gig ecosystem, and what emerges is not a sideshow—it’s a shadow economy operating largely outside traditional measurements.

Employment, People Making a Difference, Startup, Technological Unemployment

The Digital Entrepreneurship Boom: How a New Economic Class Is Rising Outside Traditional Jobs

September 23, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

Something remarkable is happening in the global economy. While headlines focus on labor shortages, layoffs, and debates about the future of work, a quieter revolution is taking place in the digital underground. Millions of people are no longer waiting for jobs—they’re building their own, powered by online platforms, AI tools, and social media ecosystems.

In 2023, Americans filed a record 5.5 million new business applications, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. At the same time, platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch created a surge of digital wealth. By 2020, more than 2 million people were already earning six figures or more directly from social media. Those numbers have only grown, giving rise to what might be called the new entrepreneurial class—a workforce that operates largely outside the boundaries of traditional employment.

AI, Latest News, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference, Startup

Why Entrepreneurship Will Be the Job of the Future

September 20, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The future of work is arriving faster than anyone expected. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation are steadily absorbing jobs that once seemed untouchable. Entire industries are being reshaped as machines take on tasks with greater efficiency, lower cost, and tireless precision. In this shifting landscape, one profession rises above the rest as both resilient and essential: entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is more than starting a business. It is the art of creating something from nothing, of carving value out of chaos, and of directing your own destiny when traditional career paths crumble. As machines become better at executing instructions, humans will need to double down on the uniquely human capacity to imagine, to risk, and to lead. The job of the future will not be about climbing corporate ladders—it will be about building the ladders themselves.

Banking, People Making a Difference, Startup

The Rise of the Founder-Creator-Investor: The New Power Model of Entrepreneurship

September 3, 2025

For decades, founders, creators, and investors have lived in separate worlds. Founders built companies. Creators built audiences. Investors wrote checks. Occasionally, the lines blurred—but rarely in a systematic way. That separation is ending. A new archetype is emerging, and it is set to rewrite the rules of entrepreneurship: the Founder-Creator-Investor (FCI).

This model isn’t about side hustlers dabbling in content or investors posting the occasional blog. It’s an operational system where three identities—operator, storyteller, and capital allocator—reinforce one another in a virtuous cycle. Each role magnifies the power of the others, creating an engine of influence and growth that traditional VCs, single-focus founders, and pure creators can’t compete with.

City Planning, Economy, People Making a Difference, Startup

The Future of Regional Innovation: Why Venture Studios Are the New Economic Engine

August 19, 2025

For decades, regional economic development followed a predictable playbook: attract a major employer, offer tax incentives, build a business park, cut the ribbon. But that era is ending. Today’s economy is driven by smaller firms, distributed innovation, and talent that no longer defaults to coastal hubs. Instead of chasing yesterday’s employers, forward-thinking regions are building tomorrow’s companies.

The model leading this transformation? The venture studio.

Startup

Here are the top 10 nations enjoying the fastest growth in small businesses – and why it matters

November 10, 2021

The innovation born from the pandemic has created a host of new digitally native businesses designed to meet evolving needs and new market opportunities.
The fuel driving this exponential growth of new small business formations around the world is ease and accessibility of digital operations.
The top countries with the largest new business formation growth in 2020 were the UK (+101%), US (+86%), Australia (+73%), Germany (+62%) and Canada (+58%).

The global health crisis has disrupted businesses around the world in vastly different ways, but particularly small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), which make up more than 90% of the total worldwide. Many businesses closed their doors temporarily and others for good, while some saw unprecedented growth.

Yet a lesser-known outcome from the past 18 months has been the innovation born from this worldwide disruption, as a host of new digitally native businesses were created to meet evolving needs, new market opportunities and a global shift to remote-work environments, which has enabled the entrepreneurial to thrive.

Science & Technology News, Startup

This Y Combinator startup is taking lab-grown meat upscale with elk, lamb and Wagyu beef cell lines

April 5, 2021

By Jonathan Shieber

Last week a select group of 20 employees and guests gathered at an event space on the San Francisco Bay, and, while looking out at the Bay Bridge, dined on a selection of choice elk sausages, Wagyu meatloaf and lamb burgers — all of which were grown from a petri dish.

The dinner was a coming out party for Orbillion Bio, a new startup pitching today in Y Combinator’s latest demo day, that’s looking to take lab-grown meats from the supermarket to high-end, bespoke butcher shops.

Instead of focusing on pork, chicken and beef, Orbillion is going after so-called heritage meats — the aforementioned elk, lamb and Wagyu beef to start.

By focusing on more expensive-end products, Orbillion doesn’t have as much pressure to slash costs as dramatically as other companies in the cellular meat market, the thinking goes.

But there’s more to the technology than its bougie beef, elite elk and luscious lamb meat.

“Orbillion uses a unique accelerated development process producing thousands of tiny tissue samples, constantly iterating to find the best tissue and media combinations,” according to Holly Jacobus, whose firm, Joyance Partners, is an early investor in Orbillion. “This is much less expensive and more efficient than traditional methods and will enable them to respond quickly to the impressive demand they’re already experiencing.”

Science & Technology News, Startup

What startup founders are saying on creating sustainable work cultures

February 17, 2021

BY JASON SPINELL

The Director of Slack’s Venture Capital Arm shares advice and insights from its group of startup founders for 2021.

The start of this new year marks an opportune time to reflect. While we’ve all happily waved goodbye to 2020, business leaders still face a great deal of uncertainty as we turn the corner.

In my role as the head of Slack Fund, Slack’s venture capital arm, I have the pleasure of speaking with and supporting entrepreneurs and startup founders, as part of our mission to to invest in and collaborate with the next great wave of enterprise software companies. Since starting up the fund in 2015, we’ve made more than 85 investments across North America and Europe, including companies like performance management software Lattice, virtual event platform Hopin, and digital whiteboard Mural.

In recent weeks, I’ve spent additional time with many of our founders in the Slack Fund portfolio, digging in on the issues that are top of mind as 2021 starts to take shape. As we consider what the future of work looks like—whether permanently remote, in-person, a hybrid format, or something else entirely—these conversations took shape as incredibly vibrant, including many unique perspectives on the “next normal.”
Moreover, the survey acted as a barometer of advice and insights for all the founders. These results revealed the biggest lessons each founder learned in 2020, as well as the opportunities that lie ahead.

Here are what founders considered at the top of their list of priorities this year.

Business, Employment, Science & Technology News, Startup, Trending

India is in the middle of a much-needed start-up revolution

November 26, 2020

India now has 38,756 officially-recognised start-ups –– with 27 unicorns, eight of which achieved this status in 2020 –– and is the third-largest tech start-up hub globally.

Entrepreneurs today are utilising the unprecedented advances from technology, operating on the demands of our demography, and inadvertently steering citizen welfare.

Five years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Start-Up India initiative, we are witnessing a golden chapter in the history of Indian entrepreneurship.

India now has 38,756 officially-recognised start-ups –– with 27 unicorns, eight of which achieved this status in 2020 –– and is the third-largest tech start-up hub globally.

According to Praxis Global Alliance, start-ups are growing at an average rate of 12–15% annually. Start-ups have raised $63 billion between 2016–20 in funding, $20 billion of which was raised in 2019 over 1,854 deals. Investments in start-ups are growing incrementally each year ($12 billion, $25.2 billion, $26.3 billion, and $34 billion invested in the last four years, respectively), with $16.7 billion till May 2020. Start-Up India kickstarted an entrepreneurship revolution. Several policy interventions were since announced, giving the entrepreneurial ecosystem a much-needed launchpad. The overhaul of the digital payments ecosystem is being led by State innovation, with Aadhaar, Jan Dhan, UPI, and India Stack. The Atal Innovation Mission, Niti Aayog, has built an ecosystem of 8,800 tinkering labs, 4,000 mentors and over two-and-a-half million students, and acted as a conduit for over 3,500 innovations while supporting 1,500 start-ups.

Continue reading… “India is in the middle of a much-needed start-up revolution”

Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight, Startup

Small rocket company Rocket Lab aims for orbital reusability

November 16, 2020

California-based Rocket Lab plans to make its orbital Electron rocket, pictured before a launch from New Zealand in June, reusable.

ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 4 (UPI) — Small launch company Rocket Lab has a big agenda for the end of 2020, including plans for its first liftoff from U.S. soil and its first attempt to recover a first-stage booster after launch.

The California-based company, known for launching in New Zealand, is on target to tackle both goals this year, founder and CEO Peter Beck said in an interview Tuesday.

If Rocket Lab’s first launch from Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport is successful, the company intends to launch regularly from that site.

“We have an agreement to fly 12 times a year from Virginia and we hope to fill those slots,” Beck said. “The pad and the integration facility will house multiple Electron rockets at the same time. Our facility there is designed for rapid response launches.”

Continue reading… “Small rocket company Rocket Lab aims for orbital reusability”

government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Startup

The SEC just made crowdfunding way more interesting for small startups

November 13, 2020

Tech funding usually happens in one of two ways. In one scenario, a software or service product— think Twitter — usually sells equity to venture capitalists who expect some kind of return on their investment. Hardware products usually go the crowdfunding route, building up a list of pre-orders that they can then use to pay for manufacturing.

Recently, however, a new Securities Exchange Commission ruling allows small companies to crowdfund equity raises, albeit in ways the aim to keep small investors safe from financial sharks. Using something called Regulation Crowdfunding, the companies were able to raise up to $1.07 million from non-accredited investors (aka you and me). Now, thanks to an update in the rules, they can raise up to $5 million in the same way hardware startups can raise millions on Kickstarter, but instead of delivering a product, these Reg Crowdfunding companies deliver profits or equity.

What this means in practice is that the alternative stock market just got a whole lot bigger. Because nearly any company can run a Regulation Crowdfunding round, you can buy a part of a small company in the same way you can invest in Apple or Amazon. Further, the SEC is “removing investment limits for accredited investors” and is now taking into account salary or net worth when it comes to limiting investments by non-accredited investors, meaning it can approve your investment to a certain income level.

Continue reading… “The SEC just made crowdfunding way more interesting for small startups”

Analysis, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Startup

Venture capital at a crossroads : Change or be forgotten

November 12, 2020

Railway crossroads serve as a reminder that trains are not the premier form of transportation they once were. The same could happen to venture capital.

Heading into the COVID crisis, Silicon Valley had reached a consensus that venture capital was going to get hit hard. In March, as the market crashed with alarming speed, new investments came to a grinding halt, and the IPO market froze completely, it seemed the most dire predictions were coming true. Today, after navigating months of uncharted waters, it is clear these doomsday expectations could not have been more wrong. However, if the industry doesn’t tread carefully, its short-term gains could pave the way to long-term self-destruction.

Venture capital in 2020 has not slowed down, it has accelerated. Whether you look at median valuation, deal count, early stage rounds, late stage mega-rounds, or IPOs, third quarter metrics across the board have raced back to historic highs. The rebound has been fueled by continued favorable macro conditions, such as tech’s outperformance in the public markets, low interest rates, regulatory tailwinds, and the fact that entrepreneurship historically outperforms in economic recessions.

The real momentum, however, stems from the much-needed structural innovation that thrives in disruption. For an industry that claims to invest in the future, it has been a long time since VC funds have been forced to innovate. Whether it is AngelList’s rolling funds, the rise of YC-style accelerators for new fund managers, or the booming popularity of direct listings and SPACs, COVID has proven to be a platform shift not only for technology, but for venture capital itself.

Continue reading… “Venture capital at a crossroads : Change or be forgotten”