Why don't entrepreneurs talk about starting businesses publicly anymore?
I grew up poor, started a business, and slowly built up wealth. This is the basic logic of America: you get rich by making things people want. If you solve problems for others or make things cheaper, you create riches. It is a simple, honest machine that works for anyone. The only way to break it is to let socialist or fascist central planners take over. When that has happened in the past, everyone became poor. The opportunity to help people and get rich is still there for the taking, at least as long as we defend freedom and choice.
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I think people stopped talking about it because the 'how-to' got buried under 'hustle culture' noise. The simple, honest machine still works, but for a global audience, the biggest barrier now isn't the will to work—it's the infrastructure.
I’m currently building Dollarland on Vercel to help bridge that gap. I see thousands of people in emerging markets who have the skills to 'make things people want' but struggle with the logistics of getting paid in USD or finding remote arbitrage.
Entrepreneurs should talk about it publicly again, but we need to focus on the technical and financial pipes that make that freedom possible for everyone, regardless of where they were born
It's because the risk ratio has changed for different people. If you're poor, there's much less to lose - you just become in debt, but you'd be there anyway.
America also has the megacorporations. Trillion dollar companies which can hire hundred of thousands of people and pay them what a medium-sized business owner would make. They have the economy of scale; they can pay a single engineer to increase profit by 0.01% and it would be more than a startup growing stuff by 3x.
The odds of me joining a megacorp is nearly nil due to immigration restrictions, so businesses are still more sensible. It's probably the case for most of the world.
Well publicly is a question of where. There's still a lot of startup talk on startup focused reddits / twitter / hn. The main trend I have seen with AI tooling is the dialogue shifting to indie / small teams rather than the VC rush of the 2010s.
I was just thinking about this the other day. Once, it was frequent to see resources for starting small businesses and while they still may be “available”, it is not prominent.
Starting a small business is an advancement of personal power!
I agree completely! Hacker News used to be a forum for that, but if you look at all the articles daily, you rarely see entrepreneurs sharing their progress like you used to.
I’m currently building Dollarland on Vercel to help bridge that gap. I see thousands of people in emerging markets who have the skills to 'make things people want' but struggle with the logistics of getting paid in USD or finding remote arbitrage.
Entrepreneurs should talk about it publicly again, but we need to focus on the technical and financial pipes that make that freedom possible for everyone, regardless of where they were born
America also has the megacorporations. Trillion dollar companies which can hire hundred of thousands of people and pay them what a medium-sized business owner would make. They have the economy of scale; they can pay a single engineer to increase profit by 0.01% and it would be more than a startup growing stuff by 3x.
The odds of me joining a megacorp is nearly nil due to immigration restrictions, so businesses are still more sensible. It's probably the case for most of the world.
I was just thinking about this the other day. Once, it was frequent to see resources for starting small businesses and while they still may be “available”, it is not prominent.
Starting a small business is an advancement of personal power!