GFL 135: Understanding the "New Builders" of Entrepreneurship

Despite popular belief to the contrary, entrepreneurship in the United States is dying. It has been since before the Great Recession of 2008, and the negative trend in American entrepreneurship has been accelerated by the Covid pandemic. New firms are being started at a slower rate, are employing fewer workers, and are being formed disproportionately in just a few major cities in the U.S. At the same time, large chains are opening more locations. Companies such as Amazon with their "deliver everything and anything" are rapidly displacing Main Street businesses. Elizabeth MacBride and Seth Levine know a lot about these trends and more. They are the authors of the new book,The New Builders - Face to Face with the True Future of Business. They joined me on the Go For Launch Podcast. In the book, they tell the stories of the next generation of entrepreneurs -- and argue for the future of American entrepreneurship. Elizabeth MacBride is an award-winning business journalist and the founder of Times of Entrepreneurship, a new publication covering entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley. Elizabeth has reported on business, economics and entrepreneurship around the world, from New York City to Gaza to Northern Idaho to Cambodia. A former managing editor of Crain’s New York Business, her work has appeared in Forbes, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Quartz, HBR.com and many others. She’s also been an entrepreneur herself as co-founder of RIABiz.com and 200kfreelancer.com, and she was part of the founding team of Wealthfront, the first online investment advisor. Seth Levine is a long-time venture capitalist who works with venture funds and companies around the globe. He is a partner at Foundry Group, a Boulder, Colorado-based venture capital firm he co-founded in 2006—which as of the end of 2020 had almost $3 billion in assets under management. Seth also co-founded Pledge 1%, a global network of companies who have pledged equity, time and product back to their local communities. He is on the board of StartupColorado, which promote