In the age of artificial intelligence and geopolitics, entrepreneurial success isn’t what it used to be. A plea for the middle class.

Success is awesome.

Success generates status.

Success gives you the feeling that you control the world.

Wait. Is it possible that those success stories originate from different times? Is it still possible in our troubled times to achieve “success”? And if yes, what does “success” mean in today’s world?

Let’s look at what entrepreneurial success might mean in the age of artificial intelligence and geopolitics.

1. Clear The Decks

First things first. In our troubled times, we need to jettison everything we learned about entrepreneurial success.

Forget overnight success.

Forget the unicorn stories.

Forget the easy life.

And yes, forget the one-person unicorn fuelled by AI.

Am I negative? Not at all. I’m just a realist after 10 years at the helm of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company I co-founded. Plans are plans, and in times of rapid change, they become worthless faster than you can think. That’s why they’re not suitable to impress investors, partners, or employees any longer. In fact, those overly ambitious plans from the endless party years only serve to trick you away from reality.

Time to ditch those overly ambitious plans and dive into the new reality.

2. Hope for The Best, Plan for The Worst

Crisis managers live by the mantra of hoping for the best, but planning for the worst. Even though a budget prepared by this principle might look less ambitious than those slick hockey stick curves from the boom years, I strongly suggest you become a little more conservative in the years to come. Times have changed, and lots can go wrong in entrepreneurship:

• Customers can go bankrupt, as economic times are tougher than they were in the last 30 years.
• If you do business globally, you might suddenly do business with a war zone. The illusion that the world is one big marketplace burst with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022.

These are just two reasons why I recently adopted conservative budgeting over ambitious budgeting. This doesn’t mean I’m a pessimist or unambitious; it just means I’m realistic about our world and the business climate.

3. The New Goal: Aim for The Middle Class

So far in this article, I’ve been overly negative: Forget the good times and plan for the worst.

But complaining is not a business discipline. What can entrepreneurs do?

Historically, belonging to the middle class was a worthwhile goal for most entrepreneurs. Only with the rise of social media did entrepreneurs start to think that they needed their own super yacht, golden helicopter, and world domination ambitions. Silicon Valley created vast riches for very few entrepreneurs, and those entrepreneurs show off their riches on social media, only for ordinary entrepreneurs trying to imitate their “success”.

Why don’t we focus on the middle class again? If you can build a profitable business that solves a pressing problem for your customers, you can feed your family from the proceeds, and still have some money left for your hobbies and other reasonable pleasures, what more do you need?