Nobody who’s remotely familiar with John Wilson’s funny, angsty HBO series How To with John Wilson will be surprised to discover that his debut feature documentary, The History of Concrete, is not really about concrete. Wilson introduces us to a guy who removes tattoos from corpses and mounts the dead inked skin as mementos for loved ones. He interviews a New York park official who details how to purge poops from public swimming pools. When the film touches on the subject of concrete, Wilson quickly pivots to another. He’ll do anything not to dwell on his nominal topic. He never wrestles with…
Author: Staff Writer
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Entrepreneurs spend most of their time planning for growth, but durable businesses are built to absorb external changes — tariffs, regulation, taxes and technology shifts. Companies that have optimized every dollar, person or process around current operating models can struggle with change. Efficiency is valuable, but eliminating every form of excess capacity can eliminate optionality. The goal is optionality, not excessive caution. Businesses should take calculated risks while planning contingencies so they have choices when assumptions prove wrong. The primary focus of entrepreneurs is thinking about how their business can…
Eight years ago, 13-year-old Alina Morse sat in Entrepreneur’s New York City office, experiencing what she called “a fairy tale for a girl from a small town in Michigan.” She was, and still is, the youngest founder to make the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine. But Alina had plenty of experience in the spotlight before then, and has continued to make headlines eight years later with her brand Zolli Candy and its complementary 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Million Smiles Initiative. Now she’s a senior at Michigan State University, choosing college because she says her love for learning and natural curiosity don’t take…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Multilingual markets contain users whose needs are poorly served by English-first AI products. Capturing this opportunity requires treating localized AI as a core engineering and product discipline. Audit your token economics to protect your margins, verify the legal and technical quality of regional datasets and design interfaces around how target users actually communicate. An English-only architecture may prevent an otherwise strong AI company from reaching users who prefer to speak, search and transact in other languages. Many AI startups launch first in English because the models, benchmarks, developer tools and…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways See how a solo founder can hand recurring research, content and follow-up to a dot, OpenAI’s new always-on AI agent inside ChatGPT, while keeping the decisions that matter. Talk a job through with your dot on a voice call, then let it keep working after you hang up. Explore seven practical business uses for these agents, from spotting missed invoices to planning your day and reviewing marketing results. OpenAI’s dots, the always-on AI agents now built into ChatGPT, arrive just as many solo founders are hitting the limits of chat-based…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Growth and ownership aren’t the same thing, and trying to personally run everything your business touches can bankrupt the parts that actually matter, one distraction at a time. The instinct to build and operate everything in-house often masks a business that’s spreading its best people too thin across things they don’t actually do best. A simple audit of what you own versus what you personally operate usually reveals one or two things you should hand off, long before the numbers would ever force the decision. By the early 2000s, LEGO…
Key Takeaways Jessica Liao Mayers launched Slate Swim in 2015 with $300, a sewing machine and made-to-order products. Slate’s minimalist, seamless swimwear stood out because Mayers resisted chasing trends. Mayers bootstrapped the company, putting revenue back into production, inventory, branding and operations rather than taking outside capital. She created a product that filled a gap in an industry — and scaled it to a seven-figure business. That’s the trajectory Jessica Liao Mayers took over the course of 11 years. Mayers grew up outside Dallas in a family of medical professionals. Fashion was not an obvious career choice. Still, a high school…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Degree cutoffs, resume rules and “safe’”career progression rarely predict on-the-job success. Most of these became “standard” simply because they were repeated long enough, and few leaders ever revisit them. Resume structure, job titles and career history are conventions — signals of how someone packaged their experience, not proof of what they can do. Employers should track who gets screened out and whether requirements actually predict performance, then remove criteria that don’t. Ask any hiring manager what makes a “safe” candidate, and you’ll get the same list: steady career progression, no…
Key Takeaways Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company faces a problem: It is not growing as quickly as he wants it to. Sarandos said Netflix is actively trying to accelerate growth by investing more heavily in areas like live programming. Netflix remains the world’s largest streaming service. Netflix has a major problem, according to the $281 billion company’s co-CEO, Ted Sarandos. “Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said at a Bloomberg conference in Los Angeles this week. “We are, though, also doing things that create…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Startup advice is built on someone else’s context. Rules like “raise as much as you can” or “move fast and break things” worked in specific situations and may not fit yours. Question advice before you follow it. Ask why it exists and whether those conditions apply to your business, and seek out people who have faced situations like yours. Every founder gets advice, and most of it comes with conviction. Find a clear market gap. Raise as much as you can. Get a technical co-founder. Much of it is useful,…