What You Can Learn from Gen Z Entrepreneurs

First off, what even is Gen Z?

As it turns out, the answer depends on who you ask. Some people say it’s the generation of people born after 2000. Others say 1993. Still others say 1996. And then people say it ends in 2009 or maybe 2012 or even as late as 2020.

To make it simple, I’m going to pick the roughly 20-year period of “births” that happened from 1995 to 2014. I’m happy to put more people into the Gen Z bandwagon, but let’s make it simple and just keep that group for now.

And yes, I’ll reveal my age… I’m Gen Z. That means I’m young.

And I’m proud of it.

Now here’s the cool part: I’ve interviewed dozens of Gen Zs who are running their own companies, have had their own successes and failures, and even people who haven’t yet pulled the trigger on self-employment. And what I found was a pattern that helped me realize what’s unique about this generation of entrepreneurs, as well as what makes us similar to the generations of entrepreneurs before us — people like Henry Ford, Martha Stewart, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Bezos, Sara Blakely, and Richard Branson.

The time alone to comb through hours of interview transcripts, mountains of biographies, piles of research, and a wealth of expert insights nearly submarined my GPA this semester. But I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, I have to drop out to launch my own company? Turns out that worked okay for a few…