Military Spouse Entrepreneurs, GenZ Hustlers 👫

Since military families typically relocate every two to three years, spouses find themselves constantly on the move, making it difficult to hold a steady job and pursue a career.

Flossie Hall, a Navy officer’s wife and mother of four says, "You get psychologically and emotionally battered, because you don't get to make a career. You lose your sense of identity." 

Military spouses often face greater unemployment than their civilian counterparts. In 2019, they had a 27% wage gap and 26% unemployment rate. This year, unemployment is expected to be as high as 35%. Most spouses are afraid of revealing their status as military spouse to the employer as it may reduce their chances of getting a job. There are lots of great resources and jobs for veterans, but nothing specifically for military spouses.

Stockholm is giving tough competition to San Francisco.

Some Stats: 

The city is second only to Silicon Valley in number of unicorn startups per capita (at around 0.8 per 100,000 inhabitants) according to a 2020 report on European tech companies. Silicon Valley boasts 1.4 unicorns per 100,000. 

Sweden has the third highest startup rate in the world, behind Turkey and Spain, with 20 startups per 1000 employees. It also has the highest three year survival rate for startups in the world at 74% - per a 2018 study by OECD.

99% of all companies in Sweden are small businesses, which today account for four out of five jobs. 

A Little Background: 

Sweden’s repute as Europe’s Silicon Valley can be credited to one thing - a late 1990s government policy to put a computer in every home. This policy along with concurrent early investment in internet connectivity explains why Stockholm has become such rich soil for startups, incubating the likes of Spotify, Skype and Minecraft, even though it has some of the highest tax rates in the world.

In the three years the scheme ran (1998-2001), 850,000 home computers were purchased through it, reaching almost a quarter of the country's households. By 2005, there were 28 broadband subscriptions per 100 people in Sweden, compared with 17 in the U.S. and a global average of 3.7, according to data from the World Bank.

A Social Benefits Cushion: 

In Sweden, childcare is mostly free. And if you lose a job or fail at business, government income insurance will provide up to 80% of your previous salary for the first 300 days of unemployment. Such wonderful benefits take the pressure off failure, making more people open to entrepreneurship. In fact, some experts are now saying that this kind of social safety net, often viewed as counter to entrepreneurial spirit, can actually foster innovation.

Did You Know? 
Spotify allowed users to stream music in 2008 when Apple's iTunes was still download-based, which gave the Swedish company the upper-hand when streaming became the norm around the world.

In early 2020, 23-year-old Agustin Cortes’ plans to apply to Silicon Valley came to a halt due to pandemic-related delays and lay-offs. Bored at home, he created Learkn, an online platform that provides free educational content to anyone with an internet connection.

Etienne Lunetta dropped out of University of Southern California just 12 credits shy of completing his degree because he was unsatisfied with virtual learning. He went on to launch two startups - Leonard Cyber, a web security consulting firm, in 2020 and Holo AI, a text generator that writes SEO content, emails, articles, short stories, etc., in 2021.

These are just two of the thousands of students who had an entrepreneurial awakening with the pandemic. 

When the world shut down in March 2020 it gave students time to rethink their career paths. Some entrepreneurial students looked at the accelerated digital growth and the flexibility of WFH as a opportunity to create their own business. 

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• Study 1: A McKinsey & Company study reported that by July 2020, the average share of digital products/services increased from 35% to 55%, an acceleration that was seven years ahead of the average rate of 2019. 
• Study 2: A recent EY study found that more than half of Gen Z-ers hope to start their own business in the next 10 years.

• Cryptocurrency Hacking: Over $600 million stolen in one of the biggest crypto thefts in world ever. 
• Toxic Gaming Culture: The State of California filed a massive lawsuit against gaming giant Activision for gender-discrimination, misogyny, racism, supporting Bill Cosby, and a lot more.  
• The "final" Final Infrastructure Bill: The Senate passed a new $1 trillion infrastructure bill - with $550 billion in new spending on roads, bridges and EVs - that could directly affect American businesses.
• Apple's Anti-privacy Privacy Feature: Apple's new feature allows it to scan your photos and alert the authorities if any of them contains child sexual abuse material. 
• Twitter’s biased AI: A researcher won $3500 for finding that Twitter’s algorithm for cropping photos favours people with slim, youthful faces and lighter skin.
• Highest Remote Jobs Industry: Since March 2020, the marketing, media, and design industry has seen a 974% growth in remote roles paying over 6-figure salaries.