11-08-2025
Why AI will spark an entrepreneurial revolution
Henrik Werdelin and Nicholas Thorne are the founders of Audos and authors of 'Me, My Customer, and AI.'
The rise of artificial intelligence is likely to follow a familiar pattern in American history: Technological innovations first trigger anxiety — fears over job loss and deleterious societal impact — and then unleash waves of productivity, creativity, entrepreneurship and wealth. But don't expect AI to be just the next incremental ripple. Rather, it appears poised to spark an entrepreneurial revolution of unprecedented scale — and not just for a few Silicon Valley unicorns.
The reason lies in what's new about AI: It is a high-tech innovation with the power to democratize high-tech entrepreneurship in ways previous technological revolutions — even the dot-com revolution of the late 1990s — never could.
Although the entrepreneurial spirit has always been central to the American identity, starting a tech business has remained out of reach for most. While 62 percent of Americans want to become entrepreneurs, only 9 percent ever take the leap. The barriers — technical complexity, the need for up-front capital, economic uncertainty and fear of failure — have historically been too much for most to overcome.
AI is breaking these barriers, potentially enabling millions of everyday Americans to build sustainable businesses by leveraging this new technology to capitalize on their human expertise and creativity. This a powerful tool to be embraced, not feared, because it fundamentally transforms small business entrepreneurship in three ways.
First, AI eliminates the technical divide. Building and investing in tech and start-ups has historically been concentrated in coastal cities and required specialized programming skills that excluded most Americans. Today, however, people with domain knowledge but without a technical background can create AI businesses that reflect their passions and meet an unmet need in their own communities. We've seen a sommelier with 30 years of wine experience build an AI-powered tasting service without writing a single line of code, and a nurse focused on nutrition develop personalized wellness programs at scale.
In a human-AI partnership, what matters most is human expertise and relationship capital — not technical prowess. The entrepreneurs who thrive in the AI-enabled future will be those who use the technology to amplify human connection, not replace it.
Second, AI dramatically accelerates business testing and market validation. The greatest risk that entrepreneurs face is investing time and money into ideas without knowing if customers will respond. AI tools enable rapid experimentation, allowing entrepreneurs to refine their businesses based on real customer feedback in days rather than months or years. This speed reduces both the financial and emotional costs of entrepreneurship. A dating coach we've worked with thought they could use AI to help more people find love. But when engaging with real customers, they quickly found greater, more specific demand from people navigating breakups — turning what could have been a failed business into a practice with potential.
Third, AI erases the final barriers to global reach that the internet never fully solved. Real-time translation removes language barriers, 24-hour chat agents free entrepreneurs to do their most important and creative work. This global accessibility enables even hyper-specialized businesses to connect with enough customers worldwide to achieve sustainability, turning previously unviable niche ideas into thriving enterprises. Imagine a tree service professional whose years of experience writing estimates for clients can be encoded into an AI service that other tree trimmers around the world can use to streamline their businesses. AI can take care of localizing the service for linguistic and environmental differences while making the entrepreneur's knowledge exportable.
Because of the way these AI-powered advantages are improving how entrepreneurs operate, the real transformation AI offers Americans won't result from the creation of a few more billion-dollar unicorns. This technology has the potential to create millions of million-dollar businesses — a distributed new breed of entrepreneurship where success is measured by sustainable income and meaningful work, not just hypergrowth and venture capital.
This is not to say that AI doesn't present pressing challenges. It is without question an enormously disruptive technology. It will eliminate jobs, yes, but that's going to happen no matter what. The greater risk is that its benefits will be concentrated overseas or in other countries.
The United States must embrace this moment by ensuring AI tools are accessible to everyone. This means investing in education that combines AI literacy with entrepreneurial thinking, and creating supportive policy frameworks that encourage experimentation.
Recent White House executive orders are steps in the right direction. President Donald Trump's January executive order 'Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence' has now materialized into a comprehensive road map, 'Winning the AI Race: America's AI Action Plan,' released last week. The plan outlines more than 90 federal policy actions focused on accelerating innovation, building AI infrastructure and leading in international diplomacy. Critically, it includes provisions for removing regulatory barriers that hinder AI development and promoting rapid buildout of data centers — exactly the kind of infrastructure support that everyday entrepreneurs need to access AI tools.
These are the right priorities. This vision requires Americans to focus on their 'ikigai' — that unique intersection of passion, skill, market need and value — that AI can help scale. It means reimagining mom-and-pop businesses for the digital age, where local expertise reaches global communities through technology. It demands rethinking education to cultivate both technical understanding and entrepreneurial creativity from an early age. The success of this national AI strategy will ultimately be measured not just by our global competitiveness but by how many everyday Americans can participate in the AI-enabled economy.
The question isn't whether AI will transform our economy — it's how we can make sure that transformation benefits as many people as possible, and how quickly we can lead the global pack. The answer depends on the choices we make today. Let's remember to embrace this technology with curiosity and creativity, finding ways it can create a new class of everyday entrepreneurs.
