Can Entrepreneurship Alleviate Poverty?

Welcome back to another episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast. This is Ryan Rutan joint, as always by my friend, the founder, and CEO of startups.com. Will, Schroeder will, it's no secret I don't think to anybody listen to the podcast that you've, you've said many times that, you know, entrepreneurship was what kind of yanked you out of being a, a kid with nothing to founder with full control over their destiny to the extent that we have full control over our destinies as founders or anyone.

But here's the question, man, like I, I want you to back into that. I want you to talk about how that worked for you and, and I think today we wanna talk about like. Can that same ladder be climbed by millions of other people? Who, who, who start where you did or start anywhere on a relative scale? And can it be used to, to alleviate or eliminate poverty?

It's, it's interesting. I don't think it, it can be used universally, like pull everybody out of poverty. Sure. I think what it can do, and I know, I know you feel the same. I feel like what entrepreneurship can do is it can create a flywheel that starts things going right. It's, you know, if we look at, it's how America was built on that flywheel. You know, where these industrialists, you know, started to build what became Modern Day America by planting those seeds.

And in most cases, they came from nothing. And they were able to use what became the American dream in order to build this next generation of wealth and success. And I think about this a lot.

This was my story. I was the kid that, that came from nothing, you know, and, and worked really hard and, you know, pursued the American dream. I genuinely believe that that is accessible to a lot of people. Now when I explain my story and I say, Hey, you know, I lived the American dream, here's typically what I get in, in today's environment, right? I get, look, you're a middle-aged white guy. Of course you had the American dream, right? Like, and, and I get it. I get it, right.

Um, yeah, it wasn't quite that easy. And so, you know, I came from a, a very difficult childhood in a very. Ed environment, and I guarantee you, by the time I was graduating bottom, my class in high school, no one was like, oh, smooth sailing for that guy. They were like 18 months before he's in jail tops. Like there's, there's nobody who was betting on, on my horse, at least of all me by the way.

But what I discovered almost inadvertently was that I had the ability through no one else's help by the way. I think this is the most important part, and by no one else's help, but also no one else stopping me either, right? Yep. To be able to create and develop a life for myself through entrepreneurship, um, I would've been a terrible employee. That would've not gone well for me, just not the way I'm built. But it turns out I was a pretty good entrepreneur.

Ryan, I think when we look at the opportunities of planting that seed, someone you know, early in their life, not that it's the only time they could do it, I do think it is one of the most valuable things we can teach a generation that is underprivileged, that is in poverty all around the world. This isn't just, you know, United States or anything else like that.

Yeah. Go. I think teaching people to fish, you know, the, the old, the old, um, uh, adage that if, if you want to, uh, uh, beat a man for a day, you give him a fish. If you want to feed him for the rest of his life, you teach him to fish. And I genuinely believe that entrepreneurship is that fishing pole, that ability for you to earn for yourself, but more importantly, to create a flywheel in your community and pull more people around it. What do you think? Yeah, I agree.

I think, I think that the flywheel concept is super important and you know, we've, we've seen it, you and I have seen it, it can change communities, it can change families, it can change entire countries. Absolutely. Right? When, when the entrepreneurial spark starts. I mean, like you said, that is sort of what, what created the, the United States. Yeah. And I think we can't overlook that, right?

It doesn't mean that entrepreneurship is for everyone, meaning that not everybody has to be a founder. Everybody has to start their own business. But in some of these communities, in some of these situations, when someone does that right, and then all of a sudden you're creating employment, you're creating opportunities, you're creating secondary economies that flow down into that. Right? Right.

Like, you know, coming, you know, having recently left, uh, Latin America and, and Guatemala in particular where there were a ton of impoverished people, right. It's also a massive hustle culture, right? People didn't sit around and go, ah, impoverished dunno what to do. They were like. What am I gonna go do today? What am I gonna sell? How am I gonna do this? Somebody would start a business, business would start to grow, right?

We saw, we saw somebody build, uh, little things like a, a, a very local restaurant, right? Well, the local restaurant creates a secondary economy because you've got some people that work there, you. They're buying from the local farmers, right? The local farmers bring up, local farmers start to make more money. They start to feed more money into the economy, and you get it, like the, the whole thing snowballs. It's economic development as it's supposed to work, right?

Somebody generates economic opportunity. There's trickle over, trickle down, and all of a sudden you start to see things, things blossom.

And I think the other thing that gets lost in the mix in a lot of cases, and we start saying like, yes, entrepreneurship can solve some of these problems. People go like, yeah, of course you guys think that way. 'cause it's what? It's what you've done. Yes and no. But I also think that, and this is what the piece that I think gets lost is that it's such an extensible set of skills. Like it, it's at its core. And I think you said this, like you learned that you could do this on your own.

On your own. Yep. Right? With nobody else's help and nobody else getting in your way. Right. It teaches you a lot about self-reliance, which is gonna be useful no matter what you end up doing. So I think we're not saying, you know, entrepreneurship at the expense of everything else. But we're saying it's a set of skills that if you, if you master them or even just learn them, understand 'em, intellectualize them. It can impact a lot of what you do in life.

Well, also it has this massive germinating effect of everybody around you.

Okay? Yeah. So if you think about this, it wasn't that Will started a company earlier. You know, the company did, did well. It was that while he was doing that, how many other people did will impact along the way? How many other people did he employ? At an un unreasonably young age, not mine, but theirs, it incentivize in condition that they could do it. I've told you this before, in my lifetime, I've hired thousands of people.

Yeah. Within that group, I keep a list a, a summary, if you will, a spreadsheet. Call it what it is. Of all the people that I've employed that have gone on to become CEOs, right, it's well over a hundred people that I've employed. Just me, little old me. I'm not like that important. I'm not being modest. I'm just like, I'm not freaking Steve Jobs. Right? Right. A hundred people that I've employed have gone on to become CEOs, not VPs. I'm not counting anybody.

That was also great job, by the way, right? Like Right. Other C levels, I mean specifically, these are specifically the ones that made it to top seat the CEO E in, in most cases, founders, right. Um, in some cases of, of massive companies like representing billions and billions of dollars. And so what we're really talking about and we're saying alleviate poverty. It's not making everybody a founder, it's making enough people, founders Yep.

At that flywheel and their community and the people around them elevates. And I think it's incredibly powerful and wildly misunderstood about how we get there. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. It'd be funny to look at that list. I mean, fun, interesting to look at that list now and to see like how many people have they employed? That's what I'm saying. Right. That's what I mean. Right. What is, what does that spread look like? Right, right.

You know, it's funny, I I, let me, let me give you the other end of that spectrum. These were, these were not CEOs, but it's, it goes back to just like how a little bit of entrepreneurial spark can go a long way.

When I was a kid, we used to do like when, when there'd be snow days, I think I've told you this story before. When there were snow days, I got so excited, not because we had the day off of school. Because I knew I could go shovel snow. Right? Right. Make money. I didn't just shovel, show shovel snow. I had a tractor. I would drag driveways. I would bring friends along. I would, I had a group of friends who then on Sundays they would call me. They're like, are we going? Are we going?

Because they knew we were gonna make hundreds of dollars that day. As you know, 13, 14, 15 year olds, we would go out and we were all doing other entrepreneurial stuff too. It was super fun to see that, like, because I had figured this thing out and I had the drive to do it, all of a sudden people would flock around that and they were like, we want to go too. Let a bunch of guys into the, into the tractor, and we'd go out, I'd drag driveways, shovel the sidewalks, and everybody made money.

Right? Right. And it was super motivational and it was fun because. At least a couple of those guys went on to be entrepreneurial. Now, I don't think I caused it, but I was certainly part of that journey where they were like, Hey, I can just go out and find my own way, make my money. I don't need to go get a job. I can just go find ways to hustle and make money. Right? Which I think is super powerful to teach people.

You planted the seed of hope and I think this is where it starts, my own story that, that I've given to you before. When the seed of hope was planted for me, I'm eight years old. I'm a kid who couldn't even afford lunch. Incredibly poor, generally didn't know where my parents were every day. Uh, before I would go to school, I'd be at the bus stop and one day I had scrounged up a quarter for whatever reason. Lunch was a dollar at the time.

'cause I went to school in the stone Age and uh, I go across the street and I buy some no. And later candies. With my quarter, because that's what I was gonna eat for the day. Like, that was my, my meal provision. I hop on the bus and a kid asked me if he can, uh, have one. I'm like, I can't, really can't, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but like, I literally, that was my lunch.

And it's, it's, by the way, being poor is humiliating and one of things that, you know, they don't put in the, in the brochure. And so I was like, can't. He's like, well, what if I give you a quarter for one? Right? And I was like, fine. He gives me a quarter, I give him the liters, he hands 'em all back. It only takes one. And what he meant was I'll buy one of them for a quarter. One of them. Yeah. And somebody else overhears gonna say, Hey, can I buy one?

And I'm like, yeah, he gives me a quarter and like my head explodes. Like I had no idea how commerce worked. The concept of arbitrage is born in Will's mind. But that was the moment. Right. And, and, and I, and I told you this before at lunch that day. I went to the lunch lady and I gave her the first dollar I'd ever earned to buy my own food. I mean, very appropriate for what we opened up with, which was Teach A Men to Fish, and it was game on from that point on, right?

It was the first time I realized without anybody teaching me, I just fell into it that I could create my own outcome, and that is an incredibly. Powerful. Incredibly. I mean, transformational changed my whole life on a random Tuesday that you'd have never guessed, right? And I realized at that moment that my condition in life didn't determine what I was allowed to do, and that created a seed of hope. That's all it did. It created a Seed of Hope.

And Ryan, how many founders do we talk to that sold candy in school that, that shovel driveways, like literally had the, I had the lemonade wagon. Not the lemonade stand. Right. We all did. Same damn thing. Right. It's such a funny thing that it's, it's a, it's a lesson that gets learned so early in life, and again, just a seed. Not even necessarily a lesson. It's a lesson of sorts, but.

I think that there's, there's something really interesting too that it, it tends to start early and it starts small, right? It doesn't take much. I think that's the thing, that's the point. It's so encouraging about this. It was a dollar like for somebody else who's listening and is saying like, yeah, I don't really buy into this. Like, it can start super small, right? That's the whole point. We're not saying turn somebody who's in, in what other words?

Like a hopeless situation, resourceful situation into the next, you know, tech founder of, of a unicorn. Doesn't have to be that either. Right? You know, it was, it was selling candy, it was shoveling snow and that was the other thing. So going, going back to hope, I don't remember exactly. I do remember that. It wasn't like the first time I went out and I was like, Hey, does anybody wanna go shovel snow with me? And everybody's like, yeah, we'd love to. Right, right.

It was after like the third or fourth time that I had gone out and made a couple hundred dollars and they were like. There's some hope, right? Some hope was created like, I hope I make some money too. Like I will go do that. And, and again, it was just a little, little seed got planted and then that's where it starts to spread to others as well. It's where it spreads. There's something called jealousy that is also a very powerful motivator. Super. We always see it.

Now we see it like in the startup world where you see one of your, what we'd call your idiot friends get funded and you're like, dude, if that guy can do it, that guy's got idiot got funded, right? This can't be that hard, right? I always joke that the reason there's a hundred people on that list of CEOs was because of me, because they were all like, dude, if that guy can be a CEO, I can absolutely. I got this, I set the bar so low. What's, what's after CEO?

I'm gonna do that, but I wanna talk about, you know, three different legs that this thing needs to stand on. But, but, but I don't wanna lose sight of the hope component. The reason, hope is so fundamental before everything else as a requirement is actually because.

We deal in the business of hope. And I don't mean that like in a greeting card way. I mean, if it weren't for hope, we wouldn't go pursue things that pay no money. Right? That would make no sense whatsoever. Right? Let me go build something that's never existed before to see if people want to buy it and make it enough fun that I want keep doing this for a long time until it's finally successful. Absolutely. No, um, there's no hope behind that. Correct? It's very quickly.

If we take away hope and reward. Okay? Reward is kind of a given that if you do something extraordinary, that that's reward. Now, that doesn't exist everywhere, right? If you're in a society that fundamentally doesn't reward risk, or a culture that doesn't reward risk, you know, for a lot of cultures they are culturally biased against entrepreneurship because they don't believe in risk.

I talk a, uh, to this, uh, a lot of my friends who are coming from like an Indian family or a nation family, they're like, risk. Risk is not. Like celebrated the way you guys celebrate it, you follow the, the most likely path with the shortest distance to the largest reward. Right. Hundred percent. Right. You follow the educational path and you become doctor, lawyer, engineer, right? And that's it. And to be fair, that's a hundred percent logical. Yeah, that's a hundred percent logical.

That is a very. Obvious and logical path to go, which is the problem, right? The problem being, in order to go down this path, you have to have the hope of doing the illogical and having that have a better outcome. If you're not inspired, if you don't have that hope that something better is gonna happen, you won't even try. We look at it and we say someone has to feel so good, so confident, if you will, or hopeful hope and confidence aren't, aren't the same thing, so hopeful.

That what they're about to embark on, however small will have the reward they expect it to, that they're willing to do it at all. And given we're in the business of hope, that is, that is a form of capital that when you take it off the table, nothing even gets started. We don't even get to the parts where you need like dollar capital, right? If, if in a society, if in a community, if in a family hope has been withdrawn, you will never see entrepreneurship. Correct.

Yeah. And, and I think again, like it's, as you said, it's, it is, it is a currency in the entrepreneurial space. Hope isn't fairy dust, it's fuel. Correct. It is literally what drives it at certain points, right? It is all we have right at the earliest stages and sometimes in the later stages when things aren't going well, it's all we've got and we have to be able to rely on that as a propellant. It's a powerful one.

There's a line in the Matrix that, uh, Larry Fishburne gives as Morpheus Uhhuh, and he says, uh, or maybe it's not, I, I, I actually, I think it's, it's whoever the bad guy was, was at the time. And he says, uh, hope it's your, as a human race, it's your greatest weakness. It's your greatest strength. Right? And I, I thought that was, that was such a perfectly delivered line. Yep. And it's so true. As founders, it's our greatest strength and weakness.

It's our greatest strength for all the obvious reasons we just described, and it's our greatest weakness because it makes us do dumb shit with a smile on our face. Right? Yeah. It makes us take ridiculous amounts of risk that can ruin us with excitement. And again, that is such a powerful component. Now let's talk about how you, you, you get that flywheel going.

Yeah. So I think that's, I think that's super important because I think as, as people are listening now, they're like, okay, a great, but like, where does it come from? Right. It comes in in. Tiny, tiny, uh, successes. Yep. It's that kid selling candy as that, that, that expands. And so I, I say, look for very tiny wins as early as possible tied to your own outcome. Yes. Okay. So if I say, Hey, you got a job and you got paid.

Nothing wrong with that, but let's say you, you're 15 years old, right? You get a job and you get paid, and you understand the value of work and reward. Incredibly powerful. But it's different than you created that work. Yep. In your case, it, uh, it, it would've been in, in looking for an opportunity to shovel a driveway, right? Yeah. That you could get paid for, and then doing it on your own accord, you know, deliver, developing customers, having a product, pricing, et cetera.

I just thought one of the funniest examples of, of earliest early, early, early entrepreneurship, we carried our canoe, three quarters of the mile down state, route 42 to get to Deer Creek. We throw it in Deer Creek to float inside. At the local golf course and we filled that thing with, I think it was like, I dunno, it was like 1800 or 2000 golf balls that had been hit into the river. We just dredged the river for hours on end. I love it. Filled this thing up and then we had to call my dad.

Actually one walked home. There was no way to call dad. I had to walk home, ask my dad to come and bring the pickup. So we could haul it back because we were like, we carried the canoe over when it had 2000 golf balls in it. We could no longer carry it anywhere. Now we've got, we've got all the gold, we can't get it home. But it's so funny like where you just go looking for these things and, and Right.

I think there's something fun there because like that one was pure hope we did all of that work to go find out if there were even golf balls in there. Mean, yeah, we'd seen some bad golfers. We knew there was gonna be some balls in there, but like. Out in the middle of nowhere at London, Ohio, and we are carrying a canoe down a highway. Hope was heavily involved there. Like, I hope we go find some stuff. Right?

It's that mix of like hope and adventure and that to some degree, like a little bit of. Childlike naivete just to say like, let's just go do this. Let's try it. Right? I hope it'll work out, but let's try it either way. There's something really powerful about that. And the trick there is you just need to inspire one Ryan, who then ins, inspires and, and cajoles and. 10 of his friends. That's how Yep. I inspired one Joey and one Nick, and that's correct. That's it.

Right. Um, I think the mistake is that like, you know, we have a hundred kids in a, in a classroom, for example, and all a hundred kids have to become entrepreneurs. No. They technically you just have to get it right with one or two if that Yep. And they will pull enough other people along that that's how the flywheel, uh, gets created. Now the other thing that, that, that, uh, you know, happens when we, when we create that flywheel, is those people go on to have kids.

Who are now inspired and educated with that hope you know, our children, Ryan, are inspired and educated with that hope, which has so much value because you're literally grooming. The next group of founders from Day Zero. Incredibly powerful. And, and what I love about this, this mission, and again, this is very ingrained in what we do@startups.com, is that you're basically saying, I only need to be right as far as, you know, grooming this next ground one in a hundred times, but when I'm right.

Yep. It'll create a thousand people behind it. That's the part that I think people miss. Right? It's a germinating effect. But we, we need to start early. We need to get those early wins, you know, with with kids early. It doesn't have to be kids, but it's a great way to start. I understand. And even small wins are big wins, even the small wins.

You know, Ryan, you and I were talking a while back, you were saying how like it's the person in Guatemala with a food cart and then all of a sudden they come home and they had more money than they had yesterday or income at all and people go, uh huh Food cart, not Microsoft. Nope. Fucking food cart. Right. It's, it's the, it's amazing the fence. Right. Figure out what's gonna take me from where I am now to a place that's significantly better. Right. Right.

It's not a life of luxury, but it's a life where there was steady income and they could put food on the table every day without question. That's a big deal. There are two very different paychecks. There's a paycheck you get from your employer and there's a paycheck you get from yourself. Okay? There's a pride that comes with the paycheck that you create for yourself. Exactly how you felt when you came home from a long day of being a kid shoveling driveways.

You were tired, but that money in your pocket was money. Correct. Right. Yeah. But it was money you created. Still wake up the next morning hoping it's gonna snow again, dude. Right. That dollar I gave to the lunch lady was the best dollar I've ever spent in my life. Right? Not 'cause I could get lunch. That was actually pretty cool too. But because it, it was my dollar and I knew I could do, I could make another one. Remember that used to be a thing like you would see the first dollar, right?

In businesses. You'd go into a business. Yeah. You'd sit up on the, on the wall behind, right? There would be the first doll on the wall. Why? Because it took a lot of work to get to that first dollar and getting it felt amazing. Right? And it wasn't that it was a dollar, right? It's not about the amount, it's not about the right. It, it's such a symbolic thing, um, that goes, goes so deep into the, the experience that that individual had to get to that point. Right.

And then to know, because it's, it's a fundamental representation of that hope. We converted hope to pride. We converted, converted hope to when somebody framed that dollar. They, they were proud of their accomplishment as they should be, by the way. Yes. Proud of the accomplishment. And it had been recognized by someone else, right? Someone gave them that dollar. Someone said, you've done something of enough value on your own. I'm gonna compensate you for it.

And if hope is contagious, pride is the bazooka cannon of contagion because it shows everyone else that it can be done and that it should be done, which is incredibly powerful. So let's say that that hope is the first leg, if, if not the first phase, that if we don't have hope, nothing gets started. Like that is the beginning of the flywheel. Okay. But the other side of it I thought was kind of interesting was this idea of a willingness to fail.

Let's say that this is a second lick and people say, well, obviously in entrepreneurship it's not like just taking a job where you are going to get paid, you're gonna do a lot of work and you may fail and not get paid. But I think what people miss when they, they hear about that is people who are broke. Can't afford to fail.

Yeah. They, they don't realize that the reason a lot of people can't get into entrepreneurship, you know, folks that, that are in some level of poverty or low income, uh, situation is that failure is not an option. Yeah. And people used to say to me all the time, this is weird for me to even say this is actually on a magazine cover where I'm on the cover of the magazine. Right. And it said, um, something to the effect of like, something. Two, something to fail.

Uh, I I, I can't remember what, what the, the phrase was. I should know. 'cause it was on like the cover of this magazine wasn't nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. Right. You know, something like that. Right. Yep. And I think the idea was that I was so young and I was so broke that I had nothing to lose. Yeah. I think that is such a gross misunderstanding. Of what being underprivileged means. Yeah. Dude, if I failed, I could not pay for rent. I had no home. Right, right. I can't pay for food.

I couldn't buy food. I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, there's a lot to lose. There's, there's a lot to lose. There's way more to lose. And I think what's missing, and again, this, this kind of second leg in the thing.

Is understanding that folks who are broke, I'm just gonna You use, use that as, as the, the, uh, overall term. Yep. Cannot afford to fail. Right. And therefore they can't afford to try. That's the thing. Right. Without any kind of gap between you and the ground. Like it's there, there's no room for risk there really, there's, there's just no space for risk at that point. And, and that's a tough one to get around. It's a very tough one to get around.

You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it, but that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all dayLong@groups.startups.com.

So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it.

You could go back and you could say, well, hold on a sec. That doesn't all hold up, because many of the immigrants that came to America, um, came with nothing and started phenomenal companies. And it's like, yes, there is a version where you can say, I have no choice to be suc, but to be successful. But you didn't have that choice. It's not like I chose to fail. Right. So saying you, you didn't have any choice but to be successful.

The implication, which isn't entirely wrong, is that I just had to keep grinding. Like I, I, I just couldn't stop, uh, stop myself. I couldn't give up because I didn't have anywhere else to go. Now there's some truth to that, but that doesn't guarantee success. You couldn't have that same condition and fail being at rock bottom where there's nowhere to go but up, doesn't guarantee that you go up. You can also just risk and stay at rock bottom, right? Correct.

You can just, you can if nothing else. Risking in that sense, when there's no safety net it, it can actually absolutely make a bad situation worse. Let's just say it's already wor as bad as it could possibly be, it's also gonna guarantee that you stay there. Correct? Right. I, I'll give you some examples.

I had so little money that a meaningful capital cost, and I'm talking like a hundred dollars, was inaccessible to me. I remember going to the ATM to, to the Chase Bankers Bank one back then, uh, ATM on campus. And I needed to get like $16 'cause I knew that that's exactly how much I had in my bank account. But the ATM only dispensed $20 bills and I could not get my money. I was so pissed off. I I couldn't get my $16 out, you know, out of the bank that I needed keeping my fortune from me.

Correct. Right. And, and so I guess what I'm saying is, at that level, you are so. Fundamentally constrained. Yeah. That it's actually just way hard to be successful. Yeah, because like, you can't go without a paycheck. I'll give you an example.

You know, I'm building a house and all of the different trades that, that are, that are working, like the electricians, the, um, concrete guys, whatever, are all floating some payroll capital with their, with their crews, some, uh, capital for the, the supplies, materials until the job is done and they get paid. Well, that's a luxury. To be able to have access to enough credit. Yep. Yep. That you can pay someone this week, even though you're gonna get paid later.

Poor people don't have those fundamental luxuries, right? They, they don't have access to credit, they don't have access to capital, and by virtue of that, they don't have that pad, that luxury of failure. Which prevents them, fundamentally prevents them not only from, from uh, getting started, but from being successful, even if they are started, I think it's very misunderstood when folks are saying, nah, let's just, let's help these poor people out.

You know, like, like in, in a very like, kind of sardonic way. Like, yes, you want to help them, but dude, if you don't understand their condition, you're not being very helpful. Right. What I'd say. If you give, you can give people, like, let's say the understanding, the motivation, the hope, all of that stuff. But if they're still in a position where risk is a luxury they can't afford. Yeah. Especially if family can move forward, right? Yeah. It's, it's a hell of an anchor.

And so, you know, when we talk about what do you do in that situation, right? Okay, you wanna help these folks out, but they actually don't have the luxury of doing what you're asking them to do, which is mm-hmm. Which is assumed risk. You've gotta provide some level of cushion. That's usually where capital comes in. Ryan, I've been banging my head against the wall for decades thinking about what this looks like. So I, I wanna beat this up a little bit with you.

There's kind of two schools of thought on this one. Okay. A, a as I've seen it, and I'm sure there are others, one is some form of, of entrepreneur welfare. Vis-a-vis, you know, some sort of grant program or some like universal basic income, uh, which I know is a, is a KG topic, but UBI for entrepreneurship. Okay, sure. So some sort of like, Hey, let's, let's give that person just a little bit more net. In order for them to get further.

Yep. I don't think a lot of people would argue if, if they could see it being used properly. Okay. The other side of it, of course, is just straight up like venture capital for, for low income. Right. Like, um, this isn't a grant, this isn't like, you know, you don't pay it back. It's, it's not welfare. Is an actual investment and you have to pay it back or said differently. Like people don't pay venture capitalists back unless there's a, an upside. But you'd have to see enough return.

You know, it's kinda where like social impact investing comes on debt. It could go venture debt to be able to make that work, right? It could do something debt, venture debt kind of, it could be the form of loan, could be Right, right.

When you look at those two versions, like, I hate to use the term welfare 'cause that's got such a stink to it, but, you know, some sort of support program, social safety net or you know, social, and I'm not trying to just rebrand it, I'm just saying we aren't just talking about. Paying people to not work. We're paying people to work like hell. And then the other side of it is, uh, an investment with an expectation or return. How do you see those two camps?

Like, you know, which one kind of appeals to you differently? Like, you know, where do you see them, them working differently? Challenge is because we're trying to talk about, we're, we're trying to talk about how to elevate people out of the risk component of it, right. How you, how to capitalize them so that they can pay the, the, the workers and materials on the concrete job so they can do the next concrete job. And again, I'm, I'm being very simple, but like Yeah, yeah.

If it's something that like, so if it's that specific, right? So if you can get into a situation where like they're, let's not say there's a guarantee, but like, it, it's almost factor financing at that point, right? Mm-hmm. Like you're, you're just essentially saying like. We're gonna, we're gonna be able to give you money, uh, to, to overcome cashflow gaps. That's one thing.

If you're saying venture debt at a larger level, where it's gonna be based on some further down the road, possibly type outcome, that still feels like, depending on how it's structured, that could still have some, some risk to it. Right. Right. For the fact that may not be looked at as, as completely unrisky.

Maybe I'm just becoming more of a socialist as I, as I get older, but like I do feel like providing some sort of a. Minimum basic income for, for founders. Again, minimum basic income for founders based on other socioeconomic factors, right? Right. The same thing you have to do to go through like fafsa, right? You have to go through and, and, and file your federal form for financial aid, right? If you qualify, you get this much, and here, here are the terms.

Something like that feels fairly interesting to me. Actually, hold on, pause.

You know, Ryan, I never drew that parallel. I'm so glad you said and, and I'm gonna hand this back to you in a second, but I want you to build on that we have exactly this welfare program for education. Yes. But, but it, it implies going to get some capabilities to work instead of just actually going to work. Right. So to me, if that's what we're trying to create is employable people. Employ them right directly. Let them employ themselves, uh, let them put whatever skills they have to work.

And again, there could be some, you know, the, the FAFSA in this case would look a bit different. You would, you'd have to show some capabilities. You'd have to show some, uh, not, not just need, right? It's not just need based. Um, but in the same way, like even, even with fafsa, really, you're passing two tests at, at the same time. You're passing the entrance exam to the university and you're passing the, the requirements from a financial standpoint.

So if you could do both of those things at the entrepreneurship level, I'd be all for that. There's gonna be metrics you have to keep hitting. Just actually the parallel's beautiful, because in the same way, if you start getting garbage grades, you're out.

If you don't hit your metrics that this set aside for that business, whatever that is, like you gotta hit revenue by by month two, you have to start employing people by month five, whatever it is, like we can come up with the criteria for, it doesn't feel that hard to manage. It has a much more direct and measurable outcome than an education. It's got a very powerful, almost like self-direction, self-motivation, self-interest.

Like one of the problems I have with paying into the university kind of scheme, if you will, is that there are really no guarantees. It's like, oh, you'll get a job. Maybe. Who knows how I was gonna get that job anyway? Right? Like it's really hard. Ask recent graduates right now, how guaranteed that is.

Yep. I guarantee they feel, but, but I guess what I'm saying is there's something really fascinating about this idea that the government, as an example, as these main funding entity, feels very confident that if we send more people through this, this amorphous thing called education higher ed, that will get payouts. So we should heavily subsidize at both the state and federal level families feel that way, that we should save for college.

Because you know, that is the thing, and this isn't being anti college. Dude, if we already have this program and it's very well understood and like imagine if we call that a welfare program, right? An educational welfare program, which it is. But here, here's what's interesting about it. Nearly every student loan is a non collateralized loan, which is damn near impossible.

For a founder to get said differently if I say I want a non collateralized loan because I'm gonna become a theater major, which I was, so I did make that ask. Right? We're like, dude, red carpet, here's all the oppor opportunities for you. Yep. But if I wanna take the same amount of capital and I want to go build what became a $700 million company, they're like, outta luck, no interest. Yeah. Right. None. Get outta here. None whatsoever, whatsoever. Go away. Theater program.

Yes. And, and so, uh, the irony, right? The irony, but, but the parallel there is beautiful. Yeah. I mean, like, it's literally staring at the face. It's, it's sitting there that, that is the, the framework that you could easily just sort of copy, paste over top of entrepreneurship, couple little tweaks, and you're retrofit and ready to go. Right? And we have no issues with that.

And the other side of that is think about the scale at which that operates, and think about the scale at which you would need this for entrepreneurship. There's not going to be nearly as many people that would want to do this as that, right? So it it's also an infrastructure to be far easier to manage. Think about when you end up giving money to college students, it goes to one place. Well, two places. The local beer hall and the university. Right. But it goes to the university, right?

When you give money to entrepreneurs, where does it go? It doesn't go in their pocket. 'cause Yes, yes. We can create some sort of minimum livable thing, right? But also it's gonna go to. Local suppliers, it's gonna go to their employees, it's gonna go to other service providers. Literally it's go drive the economy right back into the economy. Yeah. You directly drive the economy. Now here's what's also interesting.

You put somebody through four years of, of undergrad, okay, and they go on to become middle manager. They're gonna generate a tiny amount of payroll taxes, you know, by virtue of, of what they kick into the system, social security, what have you in the us, but you create an employer.

They're gonna pay payroll taxes, which a lot of people, like, a lot of people actually, our, our listeners definitely know this, but a lot of people don't know that employers match the amount that, you know, in payroll taxes that they pay directly in addition to what you're paying, right? Yeah. So like, like I love when people say, uh, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk doesn't, don't, doesn't pay their taxes. Dude, do you have any idea how much Tesla or Amazon has paid in payroll taxes, right?

Yeah. More than any human will ever pay in a million lifetime. No loopholes for those. Zero. Loopholes for those. It doesn't matter. Come on. Right? There's a loophole for everything when you're wealthy. Nope. Taxes get paid every single time. As business owners, do you have any idea how many taxes we pay? Right? Yeah. Like, you know, like without even trying.

And so my point is, you give this money directly to the, the right individual, meaning just somebody who has, has an affinity for entrepreneurship. You're not only, you know, quote, quote, like paying for an education, but you're also paying exponential amounts of givebacks and taxes. You're then creating jobs, you're then inspiring more people, I mean. The investment on an ROI basis, we're gonna take Pell, you know, in everything you, you pick up through fafsa, et cetera.

Yep. And instead, pour 10% of that specifically into entrepreneurship. Dude, the ROI on that. Yeah. Would be, it feels pretty hefty. It feels pretty hefty. I feel like we need to call somebody will, if only there was a platform. Right. But I look at that as well. Just going back to the, you know, failure of, you know, being a luxury. That's essentially what we've done in education. If people had to pay outta their own pocket, right? There was no loan program, there was no subsidy.

You had to pay with your extra cash, which I did. 'cause I worked my way through college. You'd never do it. I was making 10 bucks an hour. Like trying to pay for, for education and everything else like that. And it was brutal. And I was paying cash on the barrel head 'cause I didn't have access to debt. And I guess what I'm saying is like we have a program now that honestly doesn't work that well. You know, being higher ed where we are already deferring failure. We are saying, look, we get it.

You, you can't live, uh, and go to school at the same time and, you know, afford to fail. So for four or five, sometimes six years, uh, not counting grad school, we're gonna, we're gonna fund you, we're gonna make sure your, your bills are taken care of, that your necessary expenses are covered. Yeah. So, so that you can, that, that you can have this pad in order to do this thing, to go do it. That's it in entrepreneurship. That's it. We have one program, it's called Go Fuck Yourself.

Yeah. Right. And you still have to pay to employ at every level. Yeah, exactly. That's our fafsa and it's brutal. I, I genuinely believe that creating a safety net, and, and I mean this in a, the most productive way possible, would have a massive impact on a lower income or impoverished community that would allow them to do things that they just simply can't do. I think that's, that's the second leg. Give people. Just enough pad to allow them to, to, um, absorb some failure to create success.

Well, man, just hold on that for a second and think about, think about how that impacts the first leg. Think about how knowing that you have that, think about how that changes. The hope dynamic because there is that line you have to draw with like, am I being, is this hope or is this delusion? Right. I mean, fine line because I, it depends with the outcome I want, but I'm held back by, if I'm held back by the risk component. If I can't risk, then hope is just delusion.

If I, if I actually can't go do the thing, it is just delusion. And so if we can have hope, but if hope can be built on a foundation of, of what? Just basic security. Right? Right. Yes. Basic security. Yes. I'm not going to starve to death. By trying to do this, then I can actually put my hope to work.

So if we're talking about fafsa, we're talking about education, that leads us to the third leg, which is the idea of a bunch of people in any community, impoverished or or whatever, going out and building successful startups with no access to the education of what this takes, the mentorship, et cetera. Yeah. It's the equivalent of saying we want more doctors, but we won't have any medical schools. Right.

In order to become a doctor, you sort of have to go out there on your own, get some surgeries under your belt, kind of figure it out. And if people don't die in the process, you know, you get a high five, you become a doctor. That's literally what entrepreneurship is. It's go out there, figure it out. You we're gonna give you no education, we're gonna give you no guidance.

And if you somehow figure out one of the most complex possibilities that you could possibly encounter, then we'll tax the hell out of you. Yeah, yeah. Then we'll then we'll tax you. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I teach this, this class in middle school, uh, at my kids' school on entrepreneurship, and what I tell the kids in the first day of, of class is that what I'm going to teach you, I'm, I'm gonna teach you what's possible, essentially hope.

Right. But I'm also gonna give you the tools, the specific tools to go do it. Do it. Yeah. And I, and I call that agency the ability to, to recognize that you can be your own, um, governance in the tools to make that happen. What we do@startups.com is funda, it's literally what we do all day long. We teach 1.3 million companies and the founders within them, that agency, those tools, we give them that mentorship to say, here's what to go do next.

Yeah. And they're like, damn, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. And I was like, how could you? Yeah. How would you, how would you know, why would you doing this, right? Yeah. Right. You're not in medical school, you're in entrepreneurship where there, there is no one to tell you. Yeah.

Correct. I think what we're missing, um, and again, this is directly part of what we, what you and I do, what we're missing is a very structured way. To say here are like the 20 things that you need to know, whether it's fundraising, uh, getting customers, you know, you name it, but here's how to actually do it. Yeah. Because the chances are that wherever you came from, you actually know how to do all of these different things.

All at the same time, all related to a product that you just invented five seconds ago with a team that never existed, um, in a market that probably doesn't exist yet is zero, right? Right. It's zero, right? Zero. And yet the fundamental programs and access and fabric of teaching people how to do this. Is so fucked up. Yeah. Like it's so bad. It blows my mind that we have as many successful founders as we have given how insanely broken the education and mentorship component is.

Yeah. Worldwide goes back to that hope component.

And look, hope doesn't always come from, from a position of like, I have nothing, so I hope I'll get something right. Hope comes from like seeing that problem you wanna solve. It comes from, you know, wanting to make that dent in the universe. It comes from not wanting to suffer anymore, from something you've suffered from, or not wanting someone else to, to suffer. And so I, you know. It does, it makes a lot of people do really crazy shit down. Do it right. No, I, I agree.

What's crazy to me, okay, imagine a founder checked the first two boxes. They said, you know, I've got the hope I, I actually, I genuinely believe in, in myself or my opportunity, or I even believe that the world exists in a way that, that, that could potentially benefit me. Not everybody feels that way. Second, I've got a tiny bit of capital. Forget how I got it right. Yep. Just I have a tiny bit of capital. Or I live with my parents and a safety net keep feeding me right?

Some sort of safety net. So I got those two things covered, but I still know what the hell I'm doing. That is the given no matter where you're coming from, we have people coming to us from all walks of life, from the most impoverished to, to the most, uh, privileged. But the one thing that they share is they've never done this before and they have no idea what they're doing and they're terrified. What a massive impediment.

I go back to again, I, I always use the, the, if everybody wanted to become doctors, but med school didn't exist and you just all had to figure it out as you go. First off, think of how many doctors we'd have that are the most terrifying doctors of all time. Yeah. In second, think about how many, how few doctors we've have. ' cause they would've gone through, uh, you know, but think of how doctors we have. We'd have, we wouldn't have hospitals. We you have it now, right?

Like it would be so unheard of that that would even be a career path. Right. You know, that that would be the, the child of an Indian family being like, Hey, a mom, dad, I wanna become a doctor. Like, oh God, no. Don't do that. Right, right. We're just gonna go figure stuff out and maybe like not kill people. It is funny because when we look at like how much entrepreneurship drives the economy, right?

Yeah. Like when we look around, like a lot of the businesses that we engage with, most of the things that we do. Had some level of entrepreneurial beginnings, right? Like Correct. Even hospitals to some degree had an entrepreneurial element to them because we used to just have yes doctors, and we had offices and we had surgeons, but we didn't have hospitals, right? Hospitals really the business side of medicine.

And so despite that, we haven't created this sort of certain pathway around becoming. An entrepreneur that we have around these, these other things. And of course we've, we've right done some things right, like there, you know, there are university programs to teach you how to be an entrepreneur. I think you and I would both kinda. Shake our heads a little bit at the outcomes there, but like there's some stuff has happened, but not, not nearly as much. Right.

I think for a lot of people, Ryan, I, I think the part that they want to do it, but they have no access. Or even if they had access, like I can get into Harvard, I can get into their education or their, their entrepreneurial education program. I don't even if they have one. Um, but assuming they did it still probably isn't gonna teach me most of the things I need to know. Like, in other words, the places people would fundamentally go generally just don't work well intentioned.

Always well intentioned, but fairly ineffective. And so I look at it and I say, damn, dude, that seems like a pretty big problem if what you just said a moment ago, which is so true, that in the United States alone, it literally is the definition of a startup. You know, it was started by a bunch of of founders who then had a crazy idea to go into an unproven market, right? And we're willing to fight for it quite literally, and created an atmosphere where hope was its greatest asset.

You know, people come to the United States because they believe that their lives can be better. Yes. There aren't a lot of countries that have that universal calling card that says, your life will likely be better if you come to this country. Uh, incredibly powerful asset. Right? Yeah. One questionably that maybe we're trying to destroy right now, but I'm not gonna be political about it, but that said.

We then have this ability, um, for people to come here and say, damn, dude, there's enough wealth here, generationally, et cetera, that there's enough people out there that can make these sacrifices and we have enough of a social safety net. Again, that's even coming down to there's people that can live with their parents 'cause their parents can afford to support them in order to take some chances. There are many countries, many parts of the world that's not even an option. Right, right.

Like, uh, if you don't work in, in bring in money this week, we're all screwed. So of course you can't not work and not bring in money this week 'cause you might bring in more else, uh, later. But then if you think we built a country this big and this powerful as far as an economic engine without ever having any formality as to how we did it, it's kind of mind blowing. It is. Like, how the hell did we even get here? People that were willing to take the risks. Right.

We got here despite ourselves. Yeah. Despite, despite the odds. Look, it, it, it did cost a lot of people. Everything. And there's plenty of stories and, and Right. So it's, it is not, yeah. The, the, the, the road to entrepreneurial success is paved with the failures of others in a lot of ways. It, it is. And I think one of the questions we're asking is, does it have to be Right? Does Correct. Does it have to be. Massive success versus abject failure. Why are we right?

Why are we drawing this hard line? Um, and why are we, why are we not creating better conditions such that, you know, the outcomes could be better defined, the outcomes could be more reasonably achieved, uh, de-risk it for people a bit like, I, I think it would be amazing to be able to do that and correct. Amazing. At a lot of levels, not just to say so. Oh, so people can try it, but like when it starts to work and I guess it's, you sort of have to look at that and go.

If it's already worked to any degree, and we can look around and go, it's actually worked a hell of a lot where you and I sit right now. We're in two different places. We're using a tool right now that was built by someone, uh, an entrepreneur to facilitate this type of video communication. I'm using an an iPhone started by, you know, built by one of the most famous entrepreneurs of our, our, our generation to film this thing.

And just like all the stuff that's surround us, like we're surrounded by this stuff, clearly it works. So the fact that we're not doing more. As a society, as a nation, as, as, as a community, just even global entrepreneurs, to provide a better pathway for this feels kind of bananas. Well here, here's what I would say.

You know, the initial question, can entrepreneurship help alleviate poverty? It already has. Yes. It didn't make all poverty go away, right? No. But if, if you had any question about whether entrepreneurship can have the transformative effect of transforming communities, it did for an entire country. Yes. Right. Entrepreneurship, like the America is a case study of entrepreneurship. Yeah. At so many levels.

And so to your point, just a moment ago, the fact that we haven't said, oh, I know let's go all in on this thing, in a very deliberate manner, to inspire hope, to create that, that safety net to, to get more people to be able to, to make that leap. And this is everywhere by the way, you know, globally. Yeah. Yeah. To be able to provide the tools to say, and here's how to do it. It blows me away that it hasn't been done formally and deliberately on a global scale.

What's so exciting about it is the fact that as we head toward this path, toward this goal, everything we just described, of inspiring hope, of creating a a, an environment where you can try in creating the tools to teach you how to do it, we actually don't even need to get it that right. Success compounds, success compounds. We need to be right one in a hundred times because when we are, that one is going to exponentially blow up this flywheel that we're trying to create.

So all we need to do a, as a society globally isn't to try to make everybody an entrepreneur. It's to try to plant the seeds so that we get a few and those few plant the seeds to get even more. Yeah. And we make entrepreneurship a fundamental part of the fabric of our society globally, which gives everyone the opportunity and the hope to build something and build their own life on their own terms, exactly how they wanna live.

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