Verizon CEO Dan Schulman thinks the next billion-dollar company might have 10 employees.
“One of the places that we’re going to see kind of like a Cambrian explosion is in entrepreneurship, because you don’t need coding anymore to create a business,” Schulman said. “You just have to give the right prompts to the right agents, who will then do that for you.”
The Cambrian explosion was a sudden burst of new animal life on Earth more than 500 million years ago. Schulman expects AI to do the same for small business.
More from Verizon:
- Verizon putting $70M behind free AI training for workers, small businesses
- Verizon gives $1M to Liberty Science Center for AI programming
- Sherrill: AI economy shows Reagan-era hands-off government has run its course
- Zwicker pitches AI jobs bill: Make companies report cuts, reward them for retraining
“I think we’re going to see a lot of businesses that have 10, 100 people in it that are doing 100 million, a billion dollars of revenues,” he said last week during a fireside chat with Gov. Mikie Sherrill at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, where Verizon launched its $70 million Verizon AI Skills for America initiative.
He’s not the only one who sees it. Liat Krawczyk, executive director of the New Jersey AI Hub, said the shift is already underway.
“When the labor market doesn’t absorb you, you’re going to start a new company, and we’re seeing more creation of companies today than we have in the last decades,” she said during a panel discussion later in the afternoon.
***
Sherrill, who said she talks to small business owners all the time, cautioned that the explosion won’t be easy.
“Entrepreneurship is hard,” she said. “People don’t do it because they want easy. They do it because they like to create, because they want to help their community, because they have a vision that they’re driven to see through, and they’re excited by that.”
But she said government has to take some of the risk out, “because otherwise, we’re going to see too many people failing with these innovative new ideas that are risky, and they’re trying for the first time.”
Verizon sees the same challenge. Carrie Hughes, associate vice president of social innovation in Verizon’s corporate social responsibility organization, said at a Verizon small business event in Hoboken in July that many businesses still fail over the long term.
“You have to have sustainable tools and resources,” she said then.
***
Verizon is betting its programs can supply some of them.
Its free small business platform, Digital Ready, has supported more than 600,000 small businesses since launching in 2020, and Verizon’s goal is 1 million by 2030. It offers AI skills training, online courses on topics such as digital marketing and protecting intellectual property, expert coaching and access to capital.
Verizon is also launching a 12-week AI accelerator for select small businesses. It pairs them with expert coaches and mentors, with the goal of each business leaving with at least one AI-enabled workflow built in.
“Right now, we’re doubling down on AI,” Hughes said in July.
The new AI Skills for America portal adds free courses from Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, IBM and others. Hughes said last week that the two programs are meant to work together, so owners can learn how to transform their business and their employees can learn to use AI in their daily work.
The partners are spreading it further. Rebecca Corbin, CEO of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, said her organization has built Digital Ready into its offerings nationwide.
“If you look at the engine of economic growth, certainly it’s large business, but it’s also medium and small business,” she said.
In New Jersey, the AI Hub supports dozens of startups through its accelerator programs. It’s also piloting AI training through five public libraries, including courses on AI for small businesses.
