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Consider a self-employed entrepreneur who racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills after a visit to the emergency department due to lack of employer-sponsored health insurance. Or the entrepreneur whose business never got off the groundnot because they lacked skill or demand, but because the burden of complicated taxes or owing money they didn’t expect made them walk away before they could even get started. This sentiment underscores how current policies can deter potential entrepreneurs from leaving traditional employment. Despite all of this, in recent years, solopreneurshipthe practice of running a business without a team or employeeshas grown drastically, alongside general entrepreneurship. The U.S. averaged 430,000 business applications per month in 2024. Thats 50% more than in 2019. And according to the Small Business Administration, the number of non-employer businesses has grown 84% since 1997. There are 28.5 million non-employer businesses in the U.S., representing roughly 82% of all small businesses in the country. This includes freelance writers, designers, consultants, e-commerce entrepreneurs, influencers, virtual assistants, and photographers. Despite having no employees, solopreneurs face many of the same challenges as small business owners: funding, healthcare, taxes, and compliance. Here are three policy areas and practices they can put into place to ensure their long-term success. 1. Access to capital Solopreneurs are more likely to use personal capital to start and sustain their business. Unlike larger companies that can attract investors, solopreneurs often struggle to secure significant external funding due to their smaller scale. And in many cases, they are simply unaware of the resources available to them. There are a few possible solutions to addressing this challenge. First, government can increase the support for and awareness of tax-deductible business loans, which allow solopreneurs to deduct interest on personal loans used for business expenses. This includes traditional business loans like SBA loans, equipment financing, and business lines of credit. It also includes personal loans and home equity loans used for business, such as a solopreneur taking out a $20,000 personal loan to buy equipment and cover marketing costs. If the annual interest paid on the loan is $2,000 and the entire loan is used for business, the full interest payment can be deducted from taxable income, reducing overall taxes owed. Another option is a phased reduction of the self-employment tax. One of the biggest financial burdens for new solopreneurs is the self-employment tax, which is 15.3% (covering Social Security and Medicare) on net earnings. The government could implement a phased reduction of self-employment taxes for new solopreneurs, gradually lowering the self-employment tax burden for individuals just starting their own business. This approach could provide financial relief and additional capital during the crucial early stages of business growth. It also gives solopreneurs time to establish consistent earnings before facing full tax liability. 2. Healthcare and social safety net security Healthcare, retirement savings, parental leavethese are all benefits currently tied to a persons job. This has been described as job lock as it suppresses entrepreneurship, innovation, and ultimately economic growth. Despite this, we are still seeing a massive rise in solopreneurship meaning there is a large segment of the workforce that has to navigate these critical social safety net programs on their own. The first solution is to reform the current health reimbursement arrangement (HRA), including an individual coverage HRA (ICHRA) and a qualified small employer HRA (QSEHRA). While they were designed as a flexible way for small businesses to help employees access health insurance, the system has major flawsone is that they are not currently available for self-employed individuals. These individuals struggle to deduct healthcare costs because they lack employer-sponsored insurance. HRA reform could allow them to use pre-tax dollars for health expenses, reducing their taxable income. HRA reform could be a game-changer for solopreneurs and S-corps, making healthcare more accessible, affordable, and tax efficient. Another potential solution is to exempt health insurance premiums and retirement savings contributions from self-employment tax calculations. Right now, solopreneurs pay self-employment tax on all earnings, including money used for health insurance and retirement. Creating this exemption would lower the overall tax burdens on these individuals without reducing the benefits. 3. Compliance and tax support Running a business as a solopreneur is extremely rewarding when it comes to flexibility, being your own boss, and doing what you love. But it also comes with its own set of compliance and tax challenges. And while there are some tax advantages to working for yourself that are not available to those who work for others, it can get complex. Business owners need to be aware of different tax deadlines, eligible deductions, and how to efficiently structure their finances to benefit from lower tax rates. This will always be important, but there are proposals making their way through Washington to make it easier on solopreneurs. Right now, anyone who works for themselves faces the burden of directly paying their estimated taxes on a quarterly basis and managing a lot of the calculations on their own. There are also long-term economic security implications of not remitting payroll taxes, which reduces the Social Security benefit, plus Medicare, to a certain extent. Because of this, many self-employed workerssolopreneurs, freelancers, etc.would prefer to have taxes withheld from their earnings instead. This would reduce the risk of calculation errors and help them avoid penalties. Businesses that pay self-employed individuals for their work could withhold the taxes by adding their withholding to the taxes they already pay for their employees. This would allow solopreneurs to better manage their cash flow and alleviate the frustration of having to estimate withholdings, save for future tax payments, and navigate those payments four times a year. The rise in solopreneurship and self-employment isn’t just a trend; it’s a fundamental shift in how people choose to work these days. Supporting entrepreneurs in their business endeavors and reducing complexities for them would encourage more small business creation, which ultimately strengthens and lifts the overall economy. Tomer London is cofounder and chief product officer of Gusto. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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The AI industry is growing up fast. New model releases are now a regular event and premium AI features are quickly overtaken by free or freemium alternatives. Exhibit A: OpenAI unveiled its Deep Research tool, which can write reports on complex topics in minutes, as part of its $200-a-month Pro package, but rival Perplexity gives non-subscribers some access to its Deep Research assistant free of charge. (Yes, Google Geminis agentic research assistant is also called Deep Research.) With fewer fundamental breakthroughs, the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI are slugging it out over incremental improvements in search and reasoning performance. As AI pricing falls and performance gaps close, the focus has shifted from novelty applications to finding real business value. Its a new era for AI Agentic AI is the game-changer. Gartner forecasts that 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028, a drastic increase from less than 1% in 2024. Some 15% of day-to-day work decisions could be made autonomously by AI agents, hiking business productivity and freeing up workers for more strategic tasks. Its probably no surprise, then, that OpenAIwhich famously took 4.5 years to launch ChatGPT without any idea of who our customer was going to be, according to CEO Sam Altmanis releasing its first-ever product roadmap. Nothing says maturing market like a product roadmap. As Finn Murphy, a founder and venture capitalist, posted on X from the AI Action Summit in Paris, where the EU said it would mobilize 200 billion for AI investment: It really feels like the era of interesting technical breakthroughs being announced is over and the era of policy, partnerships, and money announcements is here. Security matters Growing up brings responsibilities, of course, especially at the enterprise level. Among the 1,803 C-suite executives surveyed for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) AI Radar, published in January, 76% recognized that their AI cybersecurity measures need further improvement. If anything, that number should be closer to 100%. Execs ranked data privacy and security as the top AI risk. Regulatory challenges and compliance also featured strongly. Their fears are not unfounded: AI applications open up a new attack surface for threat actors and security researchers have already succeeded in breaking all of the world-class AI models to some extent. Still, it took the shock arrival of Chinas DeepSeek to properly push AI security into the mainstream. It is notable that consumers and corporates have concerns about a Chinese entity having their data but seem content that U.S. and Europe-based entitieswhich impose almost identical terms and conditionswill keep it secure. Security must be a key consideration for all AI models, not just those built (or hosted) outside the US. History shows us that bad actors are often the earliest adopters of new technology, from wire fraud to phone, text and email phishing scams. In an agentic world, where AI agents have been given access to critical business information and in-house applications, the blast radius from any attack may be exponential. Think like an attacker Its often said that the best defense is to think like an attacker. Today, that means using Agentic Warfare to comprehensively test AI-driven systems for vulnerabilities long before they see the light of day. Automated red-teaming is the new standard in testing AI with speed, complexity, and scale. At every step, security has to sit alongside performance in choosing AI, rather than coming as an afterthought when something goes wrong. As much as cost, security-to-performance will be a key metric in model and app selection; this is a one-way-door decision for safe and successful AI implementations. Interestingly, the BCG survey reports that the intuitive, friendly feel of GenAI masks the discipline, commitment, and hard work required to introduce AI in the workplace. It is hard work but the rewards should be significant. Just as software led to era-defining leaps in innovation and productivity, agentic AI promises great advances in all sectorsas long as security is baked in from the beginning. Donnchadh Casey is CEO of CalypsoAI. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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E-Commerce
In todays whiplash business environment of change and uncertainty, there are a few simple, timeless strategies that consistently rank among the best for accelerating growth. No reinventing the wheel required. One such strategy is test-to-scaleclose cousin of the venerable test-and-learn approach thats long been a startup staple. Both can play a key role, depending on the stage of your company, industry, size, growth curve, andimportantlyinternal culture. Basically, test-and-learn uses small scale, iterative experiments to see what works best. Testing different messaging in a marketing campaign, for example, or perhaps different product features. The idea is to gather data, analyze the results, and learn quickly what worksor doesnt. Test-to-scale ups the ante by taking things to another level. These tests aim to discover whether a product, system, or process can withstand the stress test of large-scale rollout or production. This might include manufacturing capacity, supply chains, distribution channels, sales transactions, user adoption, and data collection. The benefits of making test-to-scale part of your go-to strategic arsenal will accrue from multiple directions, including: Faster time to market: By testing concepts early, you can identify solutions and innovations most likely to succeed, and launch them quickly and confidently. Data trove: Experimentation generates valuable real-time customer data that is super helpful for making quick scaling decisions. Innovation and agility: Testing fosters an entrepreneurial mindset that enables continuous improvement, better informed decisions, and rapid adjustments. Risk reduction: Experiments also lower risk by identifying possible pitfalls and pointing to alternative solutions early. Entrepreneurial DNA In a hypergrowth environmentlike the one Liquid I.V. has been navigating for yearsthings must happen quickly. The entrepreneurial spirit baked into our rapidly growing companys DNA is a major factor in helping us achieve the kind of growth and expansion we could scarcely have imagined 5 years ago. For us, one way this entrepreneurial spirit plays out is how we choose to invest and what we prioritize. This is where test-to-scale enters the picture. We follow the 80/20 rule. While about 80% of our investments are proven and measurable, the other 20% goes to experimentation. You never know where that experimental fifth will take you. In our case, the answer has been A long, long way! Our experimentation with TikTok Shop, for example, resulted in a wealth of e-commerce knowledge and data that helped our team open a new, high-potential channel. Experimentation with gaming yielded Twitch as a high ROI media channel for us. Those are just two among many mainstream Liquid I.V. products, processes, sales channels, and marketing tactics that began as tests, but are now integral to our success. Learn from test-to-scale Below are three key learnings, ingredients, and benefits of test-to-scale that can help any company use this simple strategy to supercharge growth: 1. Commitment to learning: The means and ability to test are, of course, a requirement. But more importantly, you must also be willing and able to learn from the results. This is more difficult than it sounds. Theres a natural tendency to bury failure rather than learn from it. The learning side of the equation is valuable payoff. Remember, finding out that something doesnt work is just as important as learning that something does. 2. Relentlessly prioritize: At Liquid I.V., we invest considerable time and effort into prioritizing our chosen experiments and potential lessons. Theres an endless list of things we could test, but only a few we truly should. Areas we prioritize include go-to-market capabilities and capacity, customer relationship management (CRM) engagement and personalization, R&D and innovation in new product development, omni-channel demand generation, and different combinations of in-house/outsourced resourcing that prioritize speed and expertise. The areas you choose may be totally different. The important thing is to make the hard choices. 3. JTBD: The jobs-to-be-done way of approaching experimentation is based on research showing that people buy products and services mainly to get some type of job done. Jobs-to-be-done might include staying properly hydrated, booking travel, building a deck, or thousands of other tasks that consumers need to regularly accomplish. Centering your test-to-scale approach around JTBD helps make innovation more predictable and marketing more effective. At Liquid I.V., its been one of the key drivers helping our brand awareness and household penetration numbers skyrocket. Theres no such thing as failure in a culture that values experimentation. There is only feedback. Your odds of success will directly corollate with your ability to embrace that feedback. Mike Keech is CEO of Liquid I.V. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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E-Commerce
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