The Entrepreneur Effect: When more people build, everyone benefits

Visit The Entrepreneur Effect for all data.

We see global entrepreneurship in real time. Millions of entrepreneurs use Shopify to sell billions of products, creating trillions of data points on commerce as it happens.

That data is clear: as AI arms entrepreneurs with new superpowers and the barriers to starting a business collapse, more people are building. When more people build, the whole world feels it.

In the last year, Shopify’s ecosystem generated:

• 9.6+ million jobs supported, up 193% since 2022
• $1.2+ trillion in economic activity, up 110% since 2022
• $68.1B in cross-border sales, up 186% since 2022

This momentum is showing up everywhere. Entrepreneurs are forming record numbers of businesses in the US, according to the US Census Bureau; and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports startup activity hitting peak levels globally.

The world needs more entrepreneurs. Today, more people have a real shot at becoming one.

What is the Entrepreneur Effect?

The Entrepreneur Effect is the outsized ripple of impact created when someone builds a business. Jobs, wealth, choice, and opportunity spread through employees, suppliers, communities, and economies. The term is a nod to a phenomenon called the “local multiplier effect”: money generated by small businesses tends to stay nearby and circulate more often, creating more wealth and jobs locally.

“Entrepreneurs are the ones taking us into the future,” says David Audretsch, a renowned entrepreneurship economist. “They serve as the conduit for getting an idea from the place where it was created and out to where people actually value it. They dare to go where others have not dared to go.”

So The Entrepreneur Effect is what we’re calling the home base for Shopify’s latest data on the rising global impact of entrepreneurship. A few trends are converging: everything that used to make entrepreneurship hard is getting easier with technology.

AI gives entrepreneurs superpowers

AI is putting business creation within the reach of more people, giving founders the power of a team of experts. But this isn’t the only benefit AI gives builders.

Agentic commerce—curated recommendations through AI chat—is proving to benefit merchants of all sizes by surfacing products based on relevance instead of only popularity or ad spend. Seventy-five percent of AI-referred sales came from products outside the 100 largest categories; specialized products finding exactly the right customers.

So the benefit is two-fold: AI tools make it easier for entrepreneurs to build, and agentic commerce makes it easier to find the customers who want what they have. More stats on the power of AI for entrepreneurs are here.

Entrepreneurship is ordinary and extraordinary

Entrepreneurship used to be the norm. Every town had its craftspeople who owned their category: the blacksmith, the butcher, the baker. But working for someone else became the default as industrialization set in. Suddenly building a business demanded skills, time, money, the right location, and reach to compete.

For two decades, Shopify has been working to dismantle all of these barriers, turning entrepreneurship back into an ordinary career. AI and other technology is accelerating that progress:

• Skills: AI tools like Sidekick give entrepreneurs access to expertise they didn’t previously have.
• Time: Half of new Shopify sellers reach their first sale in about three weeks; 43% more stores make a sale within one day compared to 2022.
• Money: Seventy-eight percent of merchants built their own store instead of having to hire someone, and 41% launched with one product meaning less product investment is required up front.
• Geography: Rural cross-border sales have grown 4.4x since 2019. You can be an entrepreneur from anywhere, and sell to anyone.
• Reach: AI works as a matchmaker, pairing entrepreneurs with customers looking for precisely what they sell.
• More data: on The Entrepreneur Effect.

The collapse of these obstacles opens up extraordinary opportunities that used to be inaccessible to most.

The expanding definition of "entrepreneur"

Our merchants identify as makers, artists, founders, small business owners... Within every one of those identities is an entrepreneurial mindset. It’s someone who has an idea to build something of their own, paired with the courage and conviction to try it. When we use the word “entrepreneur” we include all of these people, and the millions of independent dreams they’re pursuing.

Examples of these entrepreneurs and their impact exist everywhere.

Dough Dissolve

Dough Dissolve was founded in late 2025 by two friends with a shared love of baking—and a mutual loathing of the gluey mess left behind by their sourdough. They created the product they needed to dissolve that residue. Within a year, they hit seven-figure annual revenue.

“Trying to grow a company without taking an investment has been really important to us,” says co-founder Alexandra Gold. “Using AI cut down on hiring tons of consultants or adding tons of people to the team. It makes you feel like a Renaissance woman, amplified, because you’re able to be a CEO, COO and CFO all at once.”

Jill’s Homestead

Jill Dobson started making leather earrings as a hobby. She posted a few on social media for fun.

“I truly started with just a few pairs of earrings and they sold right away,” she says. “I had a backlog of orders immediately and it just kind of snowballed from there."

She expanded her product line to include totes and handbags, began hiring employees, and took over a workshop in Chariton, Iowa.

“We're really passionate about supporting our community, supporting our neighbors in town and outside of town,” she says. “It's really, really important to me that they don't just come to Jill's Homestead and leave—that they go and head out and eat, and shop, and buy flowers, and anything else that they want to do while they're in town, to really show Chariton is more than a dot on the map.”

The 9 to 5 has competition

This is what happens when more people take the leap: they launch a business, get their first sale, create jobs, work with suppliers, and generate outsized economic impact around the world.

The desire to build is innate, and it’s never been easier or more possible to do it than right now. An ordinary career choice, leading to extraordinary potential for impact and fulfillment.

This is the golden age of entrepreneurship.

Explore The Entrepreneur Effect for Shopify’s full dataset and methodology, and to meet more of the entrepreneurs behind it. Economic impact data for the year ending June 30 2026.