Luke Lintz was at the gym in 2016 when a headphone wire got in the way of his bench press. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened, and the 16-year-old had had enough. At the time, wireless headphones were just coming out, and Lindt couldn't find many of them in the North American market. He decided this was a great business opportunity. He found the product in China, scraped together $10,000 of his and his brother's savings, and they bought their first pair of wireless earbuds later that year. In the same year, Apple launched AirPods.
The only marketing they did was on Instagram. “Originally we were basically a meme page, and that's what brought millions of views to our Instagram page,” Lintz said. Instead of focusing his post on headphones, he posted a meme and added an ad for the earbuds in the caption. Within his first six months, all 500 units purchased were sold. “This was a perfect example of the right product, right time,” he said.
Shipping costs were paid by the customer, so all Lindt had to pay was camera equipment to shoot promotional videos and a small monthly warehousing fee. He was able to expand his business to over $600,000 in revenue by his 2018 graduation from high school. “I never had such a grand vision of what it would be like,” Linz told me. “Rather, it was about filling the time with something productive.”
Twenty years ago, the Lindt business would have been an impossible dream. Before social media, online access to Chinese products, and services like Shopify, launching a similar business required months of work and lots of cash to get off the ground. Bernhard Schroeder, director of the Rabin Entrepreneurship Center program at San Diego State University, remembers when e-commerce sites required $50,000 to $100,000 worth of software to run. “Now that he has an e-commerce solution on the cloud, he can rent Shopify for $50,” he told me. “The barriers to accessing technology are much lower.”
Other aspects of starting a company have also become easier. “It used to be that you had to meet someone face-to-face and you had to trust them,” Schroeder said. “It wasn't easy finding other entrepreneurs and networking and asking, 'What did we do right? What did we do wrong?'”
Over the past few decades, the landscape for entrepreneurs has changed dramatically. The ease of social media marketing, inexpensive business software, and accessible data analysis tools have significantly reduced infrastructure costs. Branding is now the name of the game. Since 1996, barriers to entry have lowered and entrepreneurs have become more diverse and more representative of the American public. And since 2020, the number of new business applications has skyrocketed dramatically. In an October Morning Consult survey, half of Gen Z respondents said they wanted to become an entrepreneur. In this new environment, this generation is uniquely equipped to succeed. All you need is an idea, a domain name, and a dream.
Before the internet, starting a business was extremely difficult. For example, access to market research, industry trends, and competitor analysis was limited and often expensive. Getting the word out involved placing ads in newspapers, promoting products on radio and television, and emailing potential customers directly. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine how successful a single marketing campaign is, and each route costs a significant amount of money. Testing new ideas and products required physical inventory, expensive infrastructure, and extensive marketing efforts. And data collection was an early concept for most startups.
Even just 15 years ago, the trajectory of entrepreneurship had not yet been laid down. All the day-to-day parts of the business, including bookkeeping, website building, and project management, were extremely time-consuming and inefficient.
“Entrepreneurship wasn't that sexy back then,” Martin Warner, a veteran entrepreneur and author of The Startup Story: An Entrepreneur's Journey from Idea to Exit, told me. Mr. Warner co-founded his first company, botObjects, his 3D printing software and hardware manufacturer, in 2013, and then in 2015 he founded two more companies.
It used to be that your identity was secondary and what you were developing came first. But now many say you need to establish your identity before you start.
Bernhard Schroeder, Program Director, Rabin Center for Entrepreneurship, San Diego State University
“For me in the beginning, it was much more about building the mechanics,” Warner said. This includes setting up accounting systems, establishing a business model, and deciding on a recruiting approach. Only then, he said, “can we focus on what's really important: building software products.”
According to It has fallen to less than 8%. U.S. Census Bureau Business Statistics. In the 2010s, the percentage remained around 8.5%. The problem wasn't that people weren't interested in starting a business. A 2016 EY survey found that 62% of 18-34 year olds have tried starting their own business. However, a major hurdle stood in their way. 42% cited financial constraints as the main barrier. Things changed after the pandemic hit. 2021, the most recent year for which we have data, saw the largest year-over-year increase in startup rates, at 8.9%. There is no doubt that startup rates will increase as the proliferation of new business applications leads to full-scale launches of companies. GoDaddy's analysis of microbusinesses (businesses too small or new to be included in government statistics) in 2023 found that 61% of entrepreneurs under 40 started their business in 2020 or later.
Over the past decade, a plethora of software tools have appeared on the market that help budding entrepreneurs streamline tedious administrative tasks and allow them to focus their time, attention, and money on the big picture. As a result, starting a business has become increasingly attractive and affordable for prospective entrepreneurs.
“In my day, entrepreneurship was about 1 percent,” said Schroeder, a professor at San Diego State University. He started his first business in his 1990s. “Look at the number of universities that were teaching entrepreneurship courses in 1980 and the number of universities that were teaching entrepreneurship courses in 2024,” he said. “The number is extraordinary. It used to be less than 100, and now it's close to 2,000.” (According to a 2013 study, the number of entrepreneurship courses is up from about 250 in 1985. In 2008, he jumped to over 5,000.)
Amid the economic changes of the past few years, an increasing number of people are taking the plunge and starting their own businesses or turning their side jobs into their main jobs. (His 2023 Bankrate study found that nearly two out of every five U.S. adult girlfriends have a side hustle.) And today, with digital tools aplenty, Starting a business has never been easier.
One of the most important changes in entrepreneurship is the new emphasis on branding. Despite impressive profits in 2018, Lindt's company overpurchased inventory and ended up with $300,000 in debt that year. To get out of there, he turned around. He decided he was better at building a brand than selling earphones, and that fall, Lindt turned Hikey into a public relations firm and slowly paid off his debt.
“Our original customers grew through referrals,” he said. Lindt, now 24, says High Key was one of the first companies to mass direct message on social media as a strategy to close clients, who now include Nicki Minaj, Kevin Hart and Khloe Kardashian. That's what it means. “We made $20 million in revenue just from Instagram DMs without making any cold calls,” Lintz said. (Business Insider confirmed that HighKey made his $20 million in revenue between his 2020 and his 2023).
This strategy worked because HighKey already had a strong brand on Instagram. “When we reached out to people, there was trust there. It was just perfect,” Lintz said.
Older entrepreneurs often don't understand how to use the tools available to them to gain the natural traction needed to compete in today's business environment.
The concept of personal branding was introduced by Tom Peters in a 1997 Fast Company cover story. “To stay in business today, our most important job is to be the head marketer of the You brand,” Peters wrote. Today, whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your career, personal branding is a strategic necessity.
Lindt has over 1 million followers on his personal Instagram account, where he posts highlight reels of his travels and inspirational posts about his business journey. Building a cohesive following as an entrepreneur is a way to win sales opportunities and remind people you exist, he said. Lindt added: “If you don't have a personal brand, it's very difficult to build credibility and credibility.”
“It used to be that your identity was secondary and what you were developing came first,” said Schroeder, of San Diego State University. But now a lot of people are saying, “I need to have an identity before I start. Then people might believe in my identity even though I haven't proposed anything yet.'' he added.
Nowhere is this concept more evident than in the rise of the $250 billion creator economy.Build your personal brand using social media platforms and content creation tools teeth business. As soon as you start creating content that attracts followers, you can attract brand partnerships, sponsored content, and product sales. Entrepreneurs are increasingly turning themselves into products.
Certain generations are uniquely set up for success. Gen Z has grown up online, so they are naturally good at navigating new environments. In his 2023 survey conducted by ZenBusiness, 78% of Gen Z respondents said being an entrepreneur is the most accessible job, and 69% found that through voluntary surveys and online videos. I learned about business through this program. In a 2023 Instagram survey, one in three Gen Zers said the best way to advance financially is through “some form of self-employment.”
Schroeder said he has seen many people in their late 30s and early 40s who want to start a company but struggle with the breakneck pace of technological innovation. “The good news is their experience,” he said. “The not-so-good news is that they're not digital natives.” The older entrepreneurs he speaks to can use them to gain the natural traction they need to compete in today's business environment. They often don't understand how to use the tools. “It’s a whole different ball game,” he said.
If this trend continues, Gen Z's pursuit of entrepreneurship will change the economic landscape. “With the emergence of new disruptor-type companies, the effect could be tremendous growth,” Schroeder said. “I also think Gen Z will be kinder entrepreneurs in the long run. They'll be more committed to what they make, what they don't waste, and how they help their local communities.” I think it will.'' He added: “It's not money for money's sake.''
It remains to be seen whether these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed entrepreneurs will succeed in the business world. According to the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, 30% of new businesses fail within two years, and half don't last more than five years. But thanks to ready-to-use tools, more people can try out their ideas. “There's a lot more saturation,” Warner said. “But I don't think young kids would think that way.”
eve upton clarke A feature writer who covers culture and society.
