78 Stats to Know About Entrepreneurship in 2024

The future of entrepreneurship can be uncertain, but there are always remarkable opportunities to continue evolving the way business owners create, buy, and sell products.

In this piece, I’ll dive into key stats from our 2024 State of Entrepreneurship Survey to keep you informed on the current landscape. If you’re in a pinch, use the table of contents to jump to the information you need.

Table of Contents

Stats About Entrepreneurship

How many entrepreneurs are there in the US?

There are approximately 31 million entrepreneurs in the U.S. Compared to the working population, they account for 16% of the workforce.

What percentage of entrepreneurs have college degrees?

According to Guidant Financial, the percentage of entrepreneurs that have pursued upper education is as follows:

44% of entrepreneurs have a bachelor’s degree.
27% of entrepreneurs have a master’s degree.
15% of entrepreneurs have a High School Diploma/GED.
11% of entrepreneurs have an associate’s degree.
4% have a doctorate degree.

While it‘s a great asset, formal education isn’t the only way to become a business owner, as a quarter of entrepreneurs only have high school diplomas.

Entrepreneurship rates have been trending upward in the United States for the past 19 years.
There were 423,945 new business applications in the U.S. in May 2024 alone.
65% of small businesses in the US are profitable.
Small businesses in the U.S. employ 61.7 million people.

General Entrepreneur Stats

80% of entrepreneurs responding to our survey run 1+ business full time. 13% juggle their own business alongside a full-time job.
21% of entrepreneurs started their own business because they were passionate about a business idea.

70% of entrepreneurs said they started their own business because they wanted a career or lifestyle change.
45% of people became entrepreneurs because they wanted to be their own boss or escape the 9-5.
Only about 8% of entrepreneurs have ever regretted starting a business.
57% of small business owners who started business during or after the COVID-19 pandemic say they did so because of inflation.
Retail and food are the most popular industries for small business owners.
24% of entrepreneurs plan to increase their staff in 2024.
Referrals from existing employees is the number one hiring tactic used by entrepreneurs.
This year, entrepreneurs are most excited about growing their customer base, team, and brand awareness.
66% of respondents plan to hire employees with AI experience in the next year.
83% of startup founders say AI positively impacts employee productivity. Entrepreneurship Process Statistics
Entrepreneurs told us that social media is their top marketing channel for growth, followed by word of mouth and website/SEO blogs.
74% of companies actively invest in social media marketing.
SEO is the third-most used marketing channel.
Eight in 10 solopreneurs say they interact with or find customers online, and only 22% say they work with customers or clients in person only.
Half of solopreneurs say digital technology (like e-commerce and remote work) made it possible to launch their business.
Entrepreneurs say most of their customers/leads come from word-of-mouth referrals (62%).

Entrepreneur Demographics

The average U.S. entrepreneur is 36.4, four years younger than the 2022 study.

Millennial business owners have risen 27% since 2023.
Baby Boomers have experienced a 7% drop in entrepreneurship representation since last year.
More Gen Zers express interest in starting a business this year than any other generation. (Quickbooks, 2023)
1.9 million American businesses are veteran-owned.

Minority Entrepreneurship Statistics

Most underrepresented entrepreneurs would rate the current opportunities available to their primary business venture as “good” (40%). Just 26% would rate opportunities as excellent.
The most significant business and entrepreneurship challenges minority entrepreneurs face are financial, growing and scaling, and marketing and generating brand awareness.
26% of entrepreneurs in the U.S. are women.
Black owners account for 26% of all new microbusinesses.

Women make up 46% of black entrepreneurs.

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5.2 million small business owners in the U.S. identify as people of color.
Women represent one in four high-growth entrepreneurs globally.

Entrepreneurs and Technology Stats

Entrepreneurs reported that their top three tools are payment processing tools (53%), messaging and communication tools (43%), and marketing tools (40%).
80% of founders surveyed think AI will help them grow.
59% of startup founders feel AI has helped them reach qualified prospects.
The most popular use cases for AI in customer marketing and segmentation are customer behavior forecasting (24%) and algorithms that help with personalized content recommendations (23%).
Startup founders say the biggest benefit of using AI in GTM strategies is increased customer conversion rates.

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Entrepreneur Income Statistics

86.3% of small business owners have a salary lower than $100,000, and 30% do not pay themselves a salary at all.
The average CEO makes an annual salary of $166,775.
The average base salary of small business owners is $70,973.
Most solopreneurs estimate their net worth to be about $100,000 — 249,999.
A majority of small business owners say they’ll pay themselves less than six figures this year.
64% of small business owners say they’re on track to meet their earnings goals this year.
More than half of U.S. side hustlers say they’ll become full-time business owners when they earn $50k — $100k.

Entrepreneur Financial Statistics

86% of small business owners say owning a business has helped them meet their personal financial goals.
The average amount of startup capital needed by a small business owner is $10,000.
18% of small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs get financing from friends and family.
Most entrepreneurs say that funding from their business (aside from customer revenue) comes from their personal funds (75%). Loans are the second most common source, followed by income from another job or venture.
85% of solopreneurs say they have used a credit card to make purchases for their business or as a source of fast funding.
78% of small business owners say their businesses are profitable.
It took an average of 1-2 years for our entrepreneurship survey respondents business’ to become profitable.
37% of entrepreneurs believe they’ll see higher sales and ARR this year.
$100k — $500k is the hardest ARR range to hit.
54% of our survey respondents struggle with earning and maintaining finances/money. 22% struggle with accessing funding, 18% struggle with budgeting, and 13% struggle with earning recurring revenue.
40% of crowdfunding campaigns are raising funds for business and entrepreneurship ventures.

How Entrepreneurs Work Statistics

A majority of solopreneurs work remotely at home.
69% of American entrepreneurs start their business at home.
64. According to social entrepreneurs, the biggest factors in making remote work sustainable are the introduction of digital collaboration platforms (39%) and flexibility in how work gets done (36%).
For social entrepreneurs, the most critical action to transform work is to build an organizational culture that promotes growth (45%).
Solopreneurs work fewer hours and take more time off but have higher stress levels.
75% of small businesses offer employee benefits.
The overwhelming majority of business owners (73%) self-reported as either somewhat happy or very happy.

Previous Interesting Facts About Entrepreneurs

In 2023, 54% of small business owners still felt that the pandemic was impacting their business.
In 2022, 84% of small business owners report working more than 40 hours per week, with 19% working more than 60 hours per week.
In 2023, Quickbooks predicted that 23% of small businesses starting in the year would have 100% remote workforces and that 87% of small businesses started would be primarily online.
More than half of small businesses (52%) are “very concerned» about inflation.
43% of small businesses plan to increase their prices in 2022.
Increasing online sales is the number one priority for small businesses in 2022.

California had the highest number of entrepreneurs in the US in 2020.
82% of small businesses have made workplace changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
29% of entrepreneurs say hiring in 2022 was “very difficult.” Only 1% of entrepreneurs say it was “very easy.”

Over To You

The HubSpot Blog team continues to run surveys to learn more about the state of entrepreneurship, and we’ll continue to share relevant data as we get our results.