Is Everyone a CEO Now? Welcome to B2S

Most economic charts look like a heartbeat.

They go up, they go down, they revert to the mean.

But this one?

This one looks like a rocket launch that forgot how to land.

For years, the number of new business applications in the US was predictable: flat at around 3.5 million a year. It was a boring statistic.

Then 2020 happened. The line went vertical.

It shot up to 5 million. But here is the part that nobody predicted: It stayed there.

Even after the lockdowns ended, even after the “return to office” mandates, the numbers refused to drop.

We aren’t looking at a pandemic anomaly anymore.

We are looking at a permanent structural shift in human ambition.

The era of the “company man” is dying, and the era of the “sovereign individual” has begun.

But why now? And more importantly, what do we get from it?

The 5 Engines Behind the Explosion

The analysts love to complicate this, but if you strip away the jargon, it comes down to five distinct shifts that created a perfect storm: