America has become an entrepreneur's paradise
Small-town entrepreneurs like Zachary Dunn are leveraging AI to build eight-figure businesses, proving that the United States is now a fertile ground for independent creators. From Etsy sellers to local accountants, ordinary Americans are ditching traditional employment to seize the fruits of artificial intelligence and online marketplaces.
I was sick of making other people rich.
- gruez
>Full-time self-employment rose to its highest level this century in 2025, reaching 16.8m, according to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, a trade group.
A common refrain is that all the "entrepreneurs" are just gig economy workers, and I was initially skeptical of this too, but it does seem to check out. The top industries with aren't related to gig economy or truckers, in fact that industry shrunk.
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20260801_EPC...
- paxys
There's a very thin line between "full-time self-employment" and unemployment. As the article itself states, the count of new business applications correlates with economic downturns and rise in unemployment. If no one is hiring you it's easy to write "entrepreneur" or "AI startup founder" or "influencer" on your LinkedIn. Doubly so when you don't even need to go to city hall to register your business, just press a few buttons online and you'll have an entity in any state you want.
Conspicuously missing from the article among all the other numbers – how many of these businesses earn enough money to pay the owner's rent?
- firasd
Seems like Instagram (and TikTok) are a big part of the story here. A lot of these 'buy my hat with a funny slogan' or 'buy my lotion' stores on Shopify, Etsy etc are highly dependent on direct-response ads / performance marketing so their fates are tied to these social media platforms
- tripleee
How does any of this article have anything to do with America specifically?
Getting off the ground with a small business in America stinks in a lot of ways. Taxes are high and health insurance is really expensive when you have to cover it yourself.
- spr-alex
The last 3-4 years have had tax obstacles that have motivated funded models over bootstrapped businesses:
1) the jobs act introduced a toxic R&D code from 2022-2025
2) tariffs with no reasonable means of manufacturing domestically and inhibited developing production lines with the prior tax code fiasco