“Across various chapters of my professional career, one of which as head of Investment and Innovation of the U.S. Small Business Administration, I've seen first hand the seismic changes our entrepreneurial economy is going through. The New Builders perfectly captures these important and interconnected trends – trends that many people fail to see.”

—JAVIER SAADE, Former Associate Administrator, Chief of Investment and Innovation, U.S. Small Business Administration

“As a woman entrepreneur in a field dominated by men, I know what it's like to have to work harder to be taken seriously and to win respect. Women have power, as these stories make clear. They don't need it lent to them. They need and deserve a fair shot – and we'll all benefit from giving them one.”

—EVA SHOCKEY BRENT, Author, TV Personality, Bow Hunter, Conservationist

“The New Builders is a masterpiece of investigation and insight. Joe Biden and everyone in his administration needs to read this book NOW! It is both an inspiring and troubling glimpse at the changing nature of entrepreneurship in America.”

—DAVID SMICK, Global Macro Hedge Fund Strategist and NYT Bestselling Author

“Pay attention to this book: Entrepreneurs may not look like you expect them to, but they're always at the forefront of where we need to go, next.”

—JIM SHOCKEY – Naturalist, Outfitter, TV Producer and Host of Jim Shockey's Hunting Adventures and UNCHARTED on Outdoor Channel

“Elizabeth MacBride and Seth Levine have done it again! Discerning fact from fiction and really getting to the heart of how the 21st century entrepreneur is thinking and responding in the ever‐evolving landscape of “innovation ecosystems” domestically and globally. This is a must read book for those intrigued or looking to better understand how entrepreneurs and small business owners will ultimately reinvigorate the American and Global economy in a post COVID‐19 landscape and channel the spirit of America's Founders whom were the original entrepreneurs that founded one of the greatest countries of modern history…”

—G. NAGESH RAO, 2016 USA Eisenhower Fellow

“As entrepreneurship becomes democratized, the characteristic of entrepreneurs is rapidly changing. Seth and Elizabeth do a brilliant job of explaining these changes by telling specific stories of the next generation of entrepreneurs in The New Builders. Anyone who cares about the future of entrepreneurship, or the future of the American economy, needs to read this book.”

—BRAD FELD, Foundry Group partner, Techstars co‐founder, author of The Startup Community Way

“We're about to experience a profoundly different and exciting economic future – one where community will matter more than ever. This book is an essential guide to what's ahead for anyone who cares about reinventing the American economy.”

—ELAINE POFELDT, journalist and author, The Million‐Dollar, One‐Person Business

“Entrepreneurs translate society's values into reality. The New Builders is a fascinating (and heartening) window onto the next generation of entrepreneurs and the products and services they're building in communities across the country.”

—FELICE GORORDO, CEO of eMerge Americas, Miami

“Thanks to Seth and Elizabeth for this clear, concrete roadmap on how to drive entrepreneurship and innovation in the U.S. economy. Their stories and messages show how the face of American entrepreneurship is changing and how entrepreneurs on Main Street are key to job growth and prosperity. I hope the new team in Washington checks out “New Builders” and follows many of its recommendations.”

—AMBASSADOR JOHN HEFFERN (ret), Fellow, Georgetown University

“Elizabeth and Seth have uncovered the power and unlimited creativity of the human brain personified by the new generation of creators helping a new ecosystem which will conquer this planet…Inspirational to all including governments and their leaders. It tells you how to take and give and shows how to embrace the philosophy of problem solving rather than complaining.”

—ZAHI KHOURI, Palestinian/American entrepreneur and philanthropist

“The vitality of Lancaster City is in larger measure because of its New Builders, the mosaic of peoples from across the globe who have made Lancaster their home – whether in the 1600s or the 2000s. To see this concept reflected by MacBride and Levine is to understand what is special about our city – and no doubt, many others.”

—DANENE SORACE, Mayor of Lancaster, PA.

“Journalists who write about the Arab region tended to cover stories of conflict, security, destitution and hardship. The region is so much more than that. Elizabeth decided to write a different narrative, about the opportunity and hope in entrepreneurs who are innovating and driving change. I would argue that many of those stories became known because of her tireless efforts. Now, she and Seth Levine have turned a similar, powerful lens on New Builders in the United States – I can't wait for these stories to be known, too.”

—DINA SHERIF, Executive Director, MIT Legatum Center for Entrepreneurship & Development, and Partner, Disruptech

“Leveling the playing field for all entrepreneurs is crucial to our country's economic future. The increasingly diverse and dynamic people starting businesses today are closing the opportunity gap and developing innovative products and services to address some of our most pressing problems. The New Builders brings their stories to life. It is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand the future of business in the United States.”

—STEVE CASE, Chairman and CEO of Revolution, LLC, Co‐Founder of AOL, Founding Chair, Startup America Partnership

Wow, what an innovative concept. I love this.”

“I've never heard of anything like this before. It's so creative…so thoughtful.”

“It's genius. I believe in it and I believe in YOU.”

Beautiful words, right? Ego building. Pride boosting. Words every budding entrepreneur wants to hear.

Wrong.

Because after all of that praise comes… Nothing.

Welcome to my world. OUR world. I don't invite you in to garner pity. But I thank you for RSVPing to the plain, hard truth – the truth that I and so many have to endure. Yet still we rise and rise again because we believe – no, scratch that – we KNOW that what we have to offer society can truly change the world.

But how do you change the world when someone won't even lend you the change from their pocket?

There are many kinds of beauty in the world, many kinds of entrepreneurs, and many kinds of power. I'm a New Builder. I'm a Black woman, with decades of experience across industries, launching new businesses and working on new next‐level ideas.

But just like it is for many New Builders, the struggle to raise money is real. I have watched my White, male peers raise serious capital with ease, with ideas that are far less developed. And I know what you may be thinking – but just because my name may appear on billboards doesn't mean business boards respect my business acumen. And nor should they. Celebrity does not automatically equal a sharp business mind. But mine is. And so are the minds of so many New Builders, yet we struggle to be taken seriously because we don't fit that mold of what an entrepreneur “ought” to look like.

Entrepreneurship, for me, is not just about financial success. It's about leaving something that lasts beyond my time on Earth. A true legacy. From expanding the definition of beauty to teaching personal branding at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, I believe my profit must have a purpose. My companies reach people around the world and delight, entertain, and educate them in out‐of‐the‐box ways. We are obsessed with storytelling, and everything we do must have some funny, some fierce, and lots of heart, whether it's a worldwide television franchise or a tasty food product.

You've been reading my words for a bit now, so speaking of food, I think you deserve a treat. What about a scoop of ice cream? And what if I hid a yummy, chunkalicious, Surprise in it?

Okay, while you enjoy your ice cream, let's get back to business.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

When I was a model, I answered to the people behind the camera. But I always wanted more than that. I wanted control. Every single day of my modeling career, I encountered prejudice because I was Black or because I was curvy. People said I couldn't do this runway show, or couldn't be on that cover, or star in that campaign. I heard a lot of “no” and “you can't” and even “you'll never.”

Oh, it hurt. Bad. I cried. Lots. But I'm happy to say, it didn't break me. The tears turned to hunger – a famished feeling in my tummy to show naysayers that I could and I would. (I can hear the “models don't eat” jokes running in your head right now, but I was the rare one who lived off of barbecued ribs and coffee ice cream milkshakes. And I was carrying about 30 pounds more body weight than my colleagues. Oh yeah.) I was also eager to show people that my skills expanded way past runway walking and magazine posing. And yes, when I spoke those aspirations aloud, the “nos” from the powers‐that‐be flowed again.

But I'm writing this Foreword, so we all know that those “heck, nos” turned into some “hell, yeses.” Without struggle there is no progress, said Frederick Douglass. And without progress, there is no power. Entrepreneurship is a way to create and hold onto your own power. Your fierce power.

Power Moves

I have messed up a lot through all this. And learned plenty of what‐the‐heck‐was‐I‐thinking lessons that I now excitedly pass along to others. One of my favorite things to do is mentor young entrepreneurs over a hearty lunch while I teach them how to draw strategic mind maps to chart the path to their B.F.O.G.s – their Big Fierce Outrageous Goals.

Here's a bit of what I tell them:

• Different is better than better. Tiny improvements on someone else's product or service ain't gonna get you far. What about your business is unique? And don't force a unique narrative when you know you're derivative. VCs and PEs see straight through that… and you.
• Hone your personal brand. People don't just invest in companies, they invest in people. What's your personal origin story? What do you stand for? How are you letting the world know that? You're competing with so many others for capital, community, customers, and team members. The clearer you are about how you want to present to the world, the more ownership you have of your own narrative and the more attractive you become to attract others.
• Find some shoulders…to cry on. Entrepreneurship is no joke. Wins, losses, setbacks, unpredictable craziness…. You need someone you can just be vulnerable with. You also need that someone who shakes you and says, “Okay, enough with the wallowing in self‐pity. Get your butt up. Get your funky butt in the shower. And then get back at it!” This “E‐life” is damn hard sometimes, but don't easily give up or stop trying. Life has no mercy on you when you stop stepping up. And if you're not experiencing failure in your work life or business, you're playing it way too safe. Shake it up and take a risk…and yes, a shower, too.
• Make freezing‐cold calls. Reach out to people who inspire you. Keep it short and to the point. Compliment them on something recent they've accomplished and give it context on how it has inspired you. You just may get a mentor out of it. That's how I established a meaningful relationship with somebody we lost this year, Tony Hsieh. I was obsessed with his book, Delivering Happiness, and picked up the phone. That cold call turned into a rewarding mentoring and business friendship. I miss him. We all do.
• Reward people who disagree with you. One thing that terrifies me is a yes person. Where everything I think up is perfect and flawless and they would never dare disagree with me. Yikes! Just writing about this type of person feels like a horror movie to me. In meetings, I often insist on hearing dissenting voices. About 50 percent of the time, there's a nugget (or a boulder) of truth that positively influences some of my decisions.
• Turn up your mic. Reach out. Speak up. Make yourself heard and seen. Don't sit there and say, “I'm going to work really, really hard and one day they're going to notice.” Because they won't. They're not thinking of you. Make them.

Hope you enjoyed my tips. Oh … how's that ice cream tasting? Magnificent? Wonderful. It's from my new business, SMiZE Cream. And yeah, you heard me say this already, but the “nos” thrown my capital‐raise‐way were dizzying.

I pitched my ice cream business to this one investor, and even though I felt beaten down by all the passes, I pitched with all of my heart and soul. I shared how we are not just an ice cream company but that we are in the business of goal setting and goal getting and teaching others how to be the same. That we don't just scoop an amazing‐tasting super‐premium frozen treat, but that we are an IP company with a suite of revenue streams that don't just bring in the bucks but delight customers to the max and help them make their dreams come true, too.

“Wow, what an innovative concept. I love this.”

“I've never heard of anything like this before. It's so creative…so thoughtful.”

“It's genius. I believe in it and I believe in YOU.”

And then he said, “I'm in.”

What?!

Okay, okay. So he didn't say those words exactly, but pretty close. But the point is, he said “yes”! And his yes was so refreshing. This guy wasn't full of empty, ego‐stroking words. He didn't flatter me. He saw me. I spent months digging into the details with him, and the idea evolved into one with true enterprise potential.

New Builders like me need to be seen for our true power. That's why I'm so happy to be connected to them in this book – all of them across the country, through this tome you hold. And I say to all of them, when they're judged unfairly for the color of their skin, or the shape of their body, or any damn thing else, find that shoulder, let the tears flow, then get your shower and go pitch again and again and again. The world is changing. And you are a part of that change. The world needs your idea. You can change the world.

And you know who else can change the world? The financial community peeps who have the big bucks to enable, support, encourage, and uplift the change makers. How do they do that? By not trying to just be better. But by being DIFFERENT. Seek out entrepreneurs who don't look like you. When they have a product or service you don't quite understand, don't pull in the one person who looks like them from your office expecting them to be an expert. Dig deeper. Staff up your team to culturally represent and be able to identify opportunities that are outside of your own reach and understanding. The world needs your leadership to make real change.

Now, back to the man who lent me the change from his pocket for my own biz. He is the co‐author of this book. Yep. Hi, Seth. Thank you so very much for seeing my power.

Okay, back to you, reader. Turn the page. And experience how, together, we can turn the world around. Elizabeth and Seth, thank you for giving voice to this community, to these amazing change makers, to these New Builders.

The definition of success in America today is increasingly corporate, built around the concepts of growth, size, and consumption. Big companies – large in terms of revenue, profits, and mindshare – frame the way we think about what is important and powerful. But our current overweening love affair with big poses a fundamental problem for America and what has been our uniquely dynamic economy. In this environment, entrepreneurship is dying. We've lost touch with the critical part of our society that is created by smaller businesses, which are responsible for much of our innovation and dynamism, most of the job growth, and produce nearly half of US Gross Domestic Product. Where entrepreneurship is thriving, it is so narrowly, among brash, young, typically White and male, technology company founders on their way to becoming big.

The needs of most entrepreneurs and small business owners are increasingly being overlooked and, as a result, they are being left behind in the economy and left out of the conversation. Entrepreneurship in the United States has declined over the last 40 years. As we narrow our definition of entrepreneurship, we narrow our opportunities and limit our economy.

It doesn't have to be this way.

The future is always coming to life somewhere. Luckily for us, we happened to be witness to it.

In the summer of 2019, we – Seth Levine, a venture capitalist, and Elizabeth MacBride, a business journalist – set out to tell the stories of entrepreneurs beyond the high‐tech enclaves we both know well. What did entrepreneurs look like in the middle of America and in communities outside the halo of traditional technology startup hotbeds?

What we discovered surprised us. The next generation of entrepreneurs doesn't look anything like past generations, and defies the popular image of an “entrepreneur” as a young, white founder, building a technology company. In fact, almost the opposite is true. Increasingly, our next generation of entrepreneurs are Black, brown, female, and over 40. They are more likely to be building a business on Main Street than in Silicon Valley. They typically start businesses based on their passions and rooted in their communities. In many cases, they are building businesses in areas left behind after the uneven recovery that followed the Great Recession of 2008–2009.

In this book we tell the stories of a wide range of entrepreneurs, from a man who revitalized an entire community through sheer stubbornness, to a family of guides in the Montana wilderness, to the first chocolatier in Arkansas, to a baker for the Dominican community of Massachusetts.

We call these entrepreneurs New Builders. They are the future of America's entrepreneurial legacy. This book tells their stories and explains the financial systems and power networks that must change if we are to help them succeed.

Yet, when we took our initial findings to our peers in the worlds of venture capital and journalism, people didn't believe us. They thought, based on what they saw about entrepreneurs in the news, that entrepreneurship in the United States was thriving. Most people have missed the fundamental changes that are taking place in our entrepreneurial landscape. As the people starting businesses have changed, our systems of finance and mentorship have failed to keep up. For the first time in history, the majority of entrepreneurs don't look like either the past generation of entrepreneurs or the people who control the capital and systems of support that are enablers of entrepreneurship.

New Builders are a diverse group, but they share one trait: they don't fit the mold of corporate success. In a business world that increasingly values conformity, New Builders defy it.

But being overlooked is a superpower of New Builders. Because of racism, sexism, and ageism, or because they saw ways to create new systems outside the ones they couldn't change, many New Builders turned to entrepreneurship – starting businesses and creating successful lives on their own terms. They often start businesses based on their values, and they are unusually resilient, possessing an extra dose of grit and determination.

New Builders are disconnected from the systems that accelerate new businesses and propel business growth. Those systems were built for past generations of entrepreneurs. New Builders are undercapitalized, and when they try to access networks that control capital, they often face systemic racism and sexism.

Entrepreneurs have been the bedrock of American business since before our country was founded, and entrepreneurship is deeply rooted in our country's history. Entrepreneurs were the women and men who explored and settled the vastness of the United States, and who built the infrastructure that stitched it all together – from rail, to industry, to the internet, to the goods and services needed for our everyday lives. But unlike past generations of entrepreneurs, who upended yesterday's big companies, today's New Builders don't have the support they need to be the dynamic engine of our economy. The Covid‐19 pandemic unfolded while we were in the midst of writing The New Builders, accelerating trends already in motion and bringing the harsh reality of our country's declining economic dynamism to the surface. When the final numbers are tallied, we will have lost millions more small businesses from what was already a shrinking base.

But New Builders' optimism is infectious, and their success in the face of obstacles gives us hope for the future of small companies and their crucial role in the American economy. In The New Builders, we argue for a better future. One that celebrates and supports the next generation of entrepreneurs and creates a more dynamic, egalitarian, and equitable society.

Our economic future lies in some surprising places – surprising only because we cling to a mistaken narrative of entrepreneurship. America needs a resurgence of these small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit they embody, especially as we emerge from the Covid‐19 economic crisis. Renewal and change come to life in small companies – from Main Streets to office parks, from kitchen tables to back‐alley garages.

In The New Builders, we call for a new mission that embraces the next generation of American entrepreneurs. Just as Silicon Valley was born out of a national mission to embrace mid‐twentieth‐century innovation and expand democracy's reach around the world, so too must we come together to build a network of support for our next generation of entrepreneurs. New Builders will play a critical role in helping rebuild communities, and in so doing will help bring forth a new vision for the United States. New Builders are not add‐ons to our mental map of business in the United States. They are the map.

In our time meeting and interviewing New Builders, we found compelling examples of new networks and support structures springing up across the country. But those efforts need to be expanded, and too many focus on changing New Builders to adapt to the existing system, rather than on adapting the system itself.

New Builders are the bedrock of the economy and the strongest part of the fabric that holds our communities together. Individually, they are strong; together, they are mighty. Their resolve – and ours – was tested in 2020 and 2021 as the pandemic raged across the country. This resolve will continue to be challenged. In this book, you will meet many New Builders and in doing so, gain a glimpse into the future of American business.

Our focus is on the amazing individuals we call the New Builders. Their stories offer hope and promise. Their passion, dedication, and grit inspire. We hope The New Builders makes you think differently about entrepreneurship, about the businesses you support, and about the policies that help drive our economy. Perhaps this book will invite you to consider the role you might play in supporting New Builders in your community.

Fundamentally, this book describes the urgent need for those with power in our society to change their thinking and their actions. We all benefit by creating a more robust society where a greater number of people have access to the capital and know‐how necessary to create and grow businesses.

Most of all, we hope this book inspires you with the potential for our shared future.