The New Builders

INTRODUCTION: THE REBIRTH OF THE GREAT AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR

The definition of success in America today is increasingly corporate, built around the concepts of growth, size, and consumption. Big companies – large in terms of revenue, profits, and mindshare – frame the way we think about what is important and powerful. But our current overweening love affair with big poses a fundamental problem for America and what has been our uniquely dynamic economy. In this environment, entrepreneurship is dying. We've lost touch with the critical part of our society that is created by smaller businesses, which are responsible for much of our innovation and dynamism, most of the job growth, and produce nearly half of US Gross Domestic Product. Where entrepreneurship is thriving, it is so narrowly, among brash, young, typically White and male, technology company founders on their way to becoming big.

The needs of most entrepreneurs and small business owners are increasingly being overlooked and, as a result, they are being left behind in the economy and left out of the conversation. Entrepreneurship in the United States has declined over the last 40 years. As we narrow our definition of entrepreneurship, we narrow our opportunities and limit our economy.

It doesn't have to be this way.

The future is always coming to life somewhere. Luckily for us, we happened to be witness to it.

In the summer of 2019, we – Seth Levine, a venture capitalist, and Elizabeth MacBride, a business journalist – ...