Everyone should start a business

Everyone Should Start a Business

Let me make the case for you. If you don’t believe me by the end of this, that’s totally fair.

AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years, according to Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic. So if we believe he’s even remotely in the right ballpark, maybe it’s time to think beyond your 401k.

Here’s why you should start something:

1. Because AI agents make it possible to move like a team of ten. The biggest barrier to starting a business used to be finding someone who could build your idea. Now AI can code, design, write copy, handle customer service, and run marketing campaigns. You’re not competing against other people anymore. You’re competing against other people with AI assistants.

2. Because you can start one while you still have a job (and probably should). Everyone says “start when you have nothing to lose.” That’s backwards. Start when you’re comfortable, well-paid, and have good benefits. Desperation makes you lead with fear. When your bills are covered, you can be patient. Patient people win. Your salary isn’t holding you back, it’s funding your experiments. How cool is that? Once you're bringing in serious revenue and have true PMF, you can decide if you want to quit your job.

3. Because it rewires your brain. Starting a business forces you to learn sales, marketing, product development, finance, operations, all at once. You stop thinking in job descriptions and start thinking in systems. You see inefficiencies everywhere. You notice revenue opportunities in random conversations. You start understanding how money actually flows through the world, not just how paychecks work. Once you realize you can make money while you sleep, your entire relationship with time and work changes forever.

4. Because $100 and an audience gets you further today than $1M did in 2010. The tools are basically free now. The distribution is basically free. The barriers are basically gone. What used to require venture capital now requires a weekend.

5. Because AI just created the biggest entrepreneurial opportunity window of human history. The same AI that’s eliminating jobs is also the greatest business-building tool ever created. While everyone else panics about replacement, smart people use AI to become irreplaceable.

6. Because it forces you to get good at storytelling. Every business is really two businesses: the product business and the brand business. Your product might get copied, but your reputation, your network, your voice—that’s impossible to replicate. This hits all aspects of your life. You feel like you're living in a movie and directing it at the same time.

7. Because it gives you an absurd amount of leverage in the job market. When the next wave of layoffs hits, you’ll be in the group that’s hiring, not the group that’s looking. Starting a business changes your peer group. You start hanging out with people who make things happen instead of people who make excuses.

8. Because you get to help people. It's such a good feeling putting something out in the world that adds value and brings happiness, pleasure and convenience to thousands or millions.

9. Because you can test demand before writing a single line of code. I like putting up a tweet or spend $50 on TikTok ads before writing code. Figuring out if there is demand before sinking years of my life into something.

10. Because you can automate the boring parts and focus on the fun. This just makes the whole process a lot more enjoyable. You can automate so much now with Lindy, n8n etc, it makes building a business way more creative these days.

11. Because your ideas deserve more than a Google Doc. There's a reason it's keeping you up at night. Trust your gut.

12. Because making money in your sleep never gets old. Here’s the math if you start a business that makes $2,000/month profit, that’s $24,000/year. Do that for 10 years and sell for 3x revenue, you’ve made $336,000. Your job gives you linear returns for linear time. Business gives you exponential returns for front-loaded work.

13. Because you get to stand on the shoulders of giants. You’re building on OpenAI, Shopify, Cloudflare, Stripe. The infrastructure that used to require teams now fits in your laptop.

14. Because it’s a rollercoaster of emotions and you’ll learn a ton about yourself. This makes for a very rich life because it forces you to confront who you actually are...your biases, your fears, your strengths, your blind spots. You can't hide behind corporate bureaucracy or someone else's strategy. Every win is yours, every failure teaches you something real about yourself. Most people sleepwalk through life. Entrepreneurs often stay awake.

15. Because maybe you can’t stop thinking about an idea and it’s driving you mad. Sometimes your passion does intersect with boring problems. If you’re obsessed with spreadsheets, you might spot the inefficiency everyone else accepts. If you’re into snowboarding, you see that ski shops are still managing rental inventory with clipboards from 1997.

16. Because it's 2025 and you can even get free startup ideas backed by trends. This is why I launched Ideabrowser. Every day you'll see startup ideas that have LEGS.

17. Because life is short and it’s fun. The riskiest thing you can do is not start. Starting a business isn’t risky anymore, it’s insurance, it's an excuse to learn, it's a way to meet people, it's a creative endeavor, it's fun as heck.

Start tonight. Start small. Start scared.

Just start.

Note: I write posts like this every week, packed with free startup ideas, insights on business building, and strategies for succeeding in the online world. It’s called Greg’s letter.

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