(MENAFN- News Direct) > If you think 20-somethings are lazy, these entrepreneurs might just change your mind.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the young, overworked startup founders of Silicon Valley [1].

“You have to just work,” Mackay Grant told the news outlet.“You have to be hardcore.”

The 24-year-old founder of an artificial intelligence finance startup said he skipped his college graduation last year in order to move to San Francisco and launch his company.

He's hardly the only one looking to get rich from long hours and a dedication to the grind. In 2020, a survey by WP Engine showed that 62% of Gen Zers wanted to found their own business someday [2]. The latest data from the Square shows that now, a whopping 84% have been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug [3]. Of the young founders they surveyed, 72% reported that they believe the economy has been tougher for them than other generations.

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“Entrepreneurship is an appealing career path for Gen Zers who have experienced economic instability and the rise of the gig economy,” Dave Liniger, RE/MAX founder, told Forbes [4].

“They view entrepreneurship as a viable path to financial security and personal fulfillment.”

So, should other Gen Zers (or their older counterparts, for that matter) adopt this new iteration of hustle culture in order to get ahead in an increasingly tough job market?

The economic challenges for Gen Z

The young adults of today who report struggling economically are not just assuming they have it bad - the data backs them up.

Gen Z are more likely to have taken out student loans to pay for their education than millennials, and to hold higher balances [5]. One-third of Gen Z respondents to a 2022 Deloitte survey say they worry about the cost of living above all other concerns, and 46% report living paycheck to paycheck [6]. Experian also reported in 2023 that 61% of Gen Zers say they are“somewhat or very financially dependent” on their parents [7].

While millennials famously had a hard time financially between the Great Recession and the housing crisis, Gen Z may be even worse off. In the U.K., for example, writer Katie Morley became a millennial sensation in 2014 when she wrote about the economic struggles of young people at that time. Recently, she compared her lot to the struggle of today's crop of 20-somethings [8]:

“Since then, the average monthly rent has more than doubled from £600 to £1,350 in England according to official data, while average U.K. house prices have skyrocketed by 69pc [%] from around £176,000 to £299,000. Wages, on the other hand, have nowhere near kept up.”

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Finding a new path outside of the white-collar workforce

Morley also wrote about Gen Z's high expectations of work, citing 2024 data from Gallup that showed Gen Z is lagging behind both millennials and Gen X in workplace engagement, with just 35% reporting feeling engaged at work [9]. The earlier Deloitte data showed that 35% of Gen Z would quit without another job lined up if their employer's values didn't align with their own. While 2024 Deloitte data showed that 86% of Gen Zers say a sense of purpose is key to their job satisfaction [10].

This may be why striking out on your own as an entrepreneur is so appealing to this generation - even if it means they work long hours in strange conditions in order to achieve their dream.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Gen Z startup founder Haseab Ullah said he survives on one Uber Eats meal delivery a day to save time on cooking, and lives in the Founders Inc. waterfront campus in Fort Mason, a former office building that was converted to a living and workspace for about 20 resident founders.

The beds, WSJ reports, resemble a train sleeper car, clustered together in one room with blackout curtains for privacy.

“You think you're going into a coffin every night,” Ullah said.“Otherwise, everything is completely fine.”

A recipe for success?

Many of the Gen Z founders the WSJ profiled are graduates of Y Combinator, a startup incubator that boasts DoorDash and Airbnb as success stories.

Jared Friedman, co-founder of Scribd and a partner at Y Combinator, described the new spirit of Gen Z entrepreneurship as a return to the early days of the internet.

“I actually see it as a coming full circle moment,” he told WSJ.“AI, it's probably 10x as big.”

The rise of AI is giving these founders the feeling of a once-in-a-lifetime moment, he noted.

“I totally empathize with the founders who want to put everything else in their life on hold in order to do this,” he said.

But is putting everything on hold, including relationships, hobbies, family and even proper sleep and mealtimes worth it?

The Mayo Clinic reports that this lifestyle - sleeping under desks, spending long hours sitting with little exercise - has many of the factors that cause burnout [11]. Long hours with little work-life balance, and having a feeling of little or no control over work can quickly lead to burnout, which can take three months to a year to recover from [12].

So, is this hustle a sustainable choice for Gen Z? Many millennials - victims of the hustle culture of the early decades of the 2000s, would say no.

In an interview with Fortune, Jennifer Moss, author of Unlocking Happiness at Work, said“After collectively facing our mortality for such an enduring length of time, it's changed the workforce - perhaps permanently” [13].

Less than 10% of startups succeed, according to data from Startup Genome, and 1 in 5 fail within the first year [14]. So many of these optimistic Gen Z entrepreneurs may find themselves in the traditional workplace before long.

Jen Fisher, Deloitte's former human sustainability leader, offers some consolation to younger workers.

“I'm hopeful that through their experiences and struggles, they will look to address the systemic issues in the workplace and move the mindset from extractive, transactional thinking,” she told Fortune,“to a human sustainability approach that focuses on creating greater value for each person connected to the organization.”

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Article sources

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[1]. Wall Street Journal .“AI startup founders tout a winning formula-no booze, no sleep, no fun”

[2]. WP Engine .“Generation Influence: Gen Z study reveals a new digital paradigm”

[3]. Square .“Gen Z entrepreneurs are thriving: New Square report finds 84% still plan to be business owners 5 years from now”

[4]. Forbes .“Why Gen Z is thriving in the entrepreneur life”

[5]. Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy .“Financial stress and philanthropic influence: The precarious promise of generation z”

[6]. Deloitte .“The Deloitte global 2022 Gen Z & millennial survey”

[7]. Experian .“Survey says: Many Gen Zers and millennials seeking financial independence”

[8]. The Telegraph .“Millennials had it bad – but Gen Z's outlook is impossibly bleak”

[9]. Gallop .“The new challenge of engaging younger workers”

[10]. Deloitte .“2025 Gen Z & millennial survey”

[11]. Mayo Clinic .“Job burnout: How to spot it and take action”

[12]. iPractice .“How do I recover from burnout?”

[13]. Fortune .“Feel the burn(out): Millennials are aging from bright-eyed 'hustle culture' workers into exhausted middle managers”

[14]. Startup Genome .“Defining a tech startup”

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.

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