Erik TorenbergGeneral Partner, Andreessen Horowitz

The barriers to entrepreneurship are FALLING - here's why! 🔨

16 Apr 2025 · 1 min

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1:06

In this monologue, the speaker reflects on the evolution of entrepreneurship, arguing that many people already have passions and skills—whether crafting toys, cooking, or sewing—that could be turned into businesses, but they often refrain because they perceive a lack of experience, high costs, or complexity. The speaker contends that the cost of failure has dropped dramatically and that modern technology makes it easier to start, grow, and scale ventures. As a result, the barrier between aspiring entrepreneurs and actual entrepreneurs is shrinking, and the speaker predicts that more individuals will attempt entrepreneurship in the future, which he views positively.

Chapters

Why don't you talk briefly about how you see sort of the evolution of entrepreneurship or how you see it going forward? I think that there are a lot of people who have things in their lives that give them great joy, great pleasure. Maybe it's your workshop. You go and you make beautiful toys for your nieces and nephews. Maybe it's in your kitchen where you make delicious lasagna for your neighbors or bake cupcakes or muffins. Maybe it's a particular piece of clothing that you make around the holidays for your friends and family. I'm not suggesting everyone should commercialize their hobby, but I do think there's a lot of people out there who have a thing in their life, but for some reason or another, usually because they either think they have no experience or it's too expensive or too complicated, they do not cross the chasm from aspiring entrepreneur to entrepreneur. And I think that with the cost of failure being lower than it's ever been, with technology making it easier to get started and to ramp and to scale and to be more successful, With, with again, lower cost of failure. I think in the future you will see more people try their hand at entrepreneurship. I think that's an amazing thing.