The BEST Businesses To Start In 2024

Zero to One is entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s unconventional advice for technology startups. Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, argues that technology has stagnated. Most new companies improve incrementally on existing products, but Thiel argues that the most valuable and game-changing startups create something new. They move the world from zero to one. Creating new things is not only the best path to profits—it’s also the only path for human progress. In this guide, we’ll compare Thiel’s perspective with W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy, Geoffrey Moore’s strategy for high-tech startups, and the insights of other innovation experts.

If you’re looking to break away from your current work arrangement and start doing something that you’re passionate about, consider starting your own microbusiness, a business run by one person. Where you once needed to have a fair amount of funding to get started, Chris Guillebeau suggests you can now do so for as little as $100.

In The $100 Startup, Guillebeau breaks down the process of starting your own business. He covers everything from finding your target audience to creating a development plan, explaining how you can find success without loaning a cent from the bank.

In Fix This Next, entrepreneur and business author Mike Michalowicz introduces the Business Hierarchy of Needs, a system for determining which of your company’s problems you should fix next. Michalowicz created this system because many entrepreneurs struggle with prioritization. They’re often overwhelmed by problems, so they focus on fixing the most immediate problem instead of identifying the most impactful approach that’ll fix the problem’s root cause. Since the root cause isn’t resolved, problems continue to appear.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how Michalowicz’s prioritization system works and how you can use it to make your business more successful. In our commentary, we’ll compare his advice to that of other business experts like Simon Sinek and Seth Godin, as well as explore concrete tips for implementing Michalowicz’s ideas.

Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First criticizes traditional business accounting methods by claiming that they are unintuitive, and that their unintuitive nature leads many entrepreneurs to failure. He then outlines an alternate accounting system, which he calls the Profit First method. In the Profit First method, a percentage of income is set aside as profit before any expenses are calculated. This method, he says, allows an entrepreneur to do their business accounting in a simple and intuitive way, and to increase their business’s profitability and stability.

In this guide, we’ll discuss Michalowicz’s criticisms of traditional accounting, as well as his own recommendations for how to set up Profit First accounting and use its guidelines to improve your business. We’ll also provide commentary explaining psychological and economic research related to Michalowicz’s claims, as well as practical advice on how to apply some of his broader recommendations.

David Ogilvy (1911-1999), the “father of advertising,” started one of the most successful advertising agencies in the world and worked with major clients such as Rolls-Royce, Shell, and Hathaway. In Ogilvy on Advertising, Ogilvy shares his decades’ worth of experience as a salesman, copywriter, and adman.

Ogilvy will teach you the craft of advertising—how to create legible, easy-to-understand print ads, engaging radio ads, and TV commercials that sell. He’ll also cover how to use marketing and research to increase your chances of success. Finally, he’ll give an overview of the advertising industry as it stood in 1985, covering how to get a job in advertising, run an agency, find an agency, and manage public opinion.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is considered a bible in the tech entrepreneurship community. It’s a methodology for creating businesses that focuses you on finding out what customers actually want. It uses concepts of scientific experimentation to prove that you’re making progress. It encourages you to launch as early and cheaply as possible so you don’t waste time and money.

Learn the critical concepts of the Minimum Viable Product, cohort metrics, A/B testing, virality, and startup pivots.

In Fix This Next, entrepreneur and business author Mike Michalowicz introduces the Business Hierarchy of Needs, a system for determining which of your company’s problems you should fix next. Michalowicz created this system because many entrepreneurs struggle with prioritization. They’re often overwhelmed by problems, so they focus on fixing the most immediate problem instead of identifying the most impactful approach that’ll fix the problem’s root cause. Since the root cause isn’t resolved, problems continue to appear.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how Michalowicz’s prioritization system works and how you can use it to make your business more successful. In our commentary, we’ll compare his advice to that of other business experts like Simon Sinek and Seth Godin, as well as explore concrete tips for implementing Michalowicz’s ideas.

Conventional wisdom says that starting a business requires outside investors, strategic plans, accountants, a board of directors, and many other "musts." But in Rework, entrepreneurs Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain how old-school thinking doesn't apply in today's new business paradigm.

If you're launching a company today, you can access online tools and technology that let you operate on a shoestring. You don't need a big staff of managers and workers. You don't need to take on huge financial risks. You don't need to work 100 hours a week. You don't need to advertise to find customers. You don't even need an office—your employees can work from home from anywhere in the world. Instead, reject old-school thinking, embrace simplicity, and run your company like a smart, frugal, well-oiled machine.