Who’s writing this
Hi, I’m Michael, a recovering startup founder. For nine years that meant 5 hours of sleep and 7 daily espresso shots. Now it means lifting, sleeping, and chasing a toddler around.
Those nine years began when I founded Novo. I started it in 2016 because banks were treating small business owners like the sideshow of the American economy. We thought they deserved better - so we built it.
I was the business guy, so my boundaries on what I could and couldn’t do were clear to me. It started with strategy and numbers. When I needed design, I taught myself Illustrator. When someone asked me to QA something (I first had to look up what that even meant) then I taught myself how to do it. If it was learnable in a reasonable amount of time, I learned it... because if I didn’t, then who would? The only thing off-limits at the time: software development, so that required hiring.
Fast-forward to 2025: I had built Novo into a 9-figure business, had raised over $170 million and had grown a team of 150 people. Novo was serving more than 250,000 small businesses across all fifty states. While I was CEO, Forbes named us to the FinTech 50 and Inc. put us on the Inc. 5000.
What I cared most about while building Novo never changed. I’ve always been obsessed with the modern-day small business owner. My favorite thing to do was talking directly with customers to learn about their stories: who they were, why they started their business, and how they overcame the forces stacked against them. I was watching the hero’s journey play out in real time. Their hero’s journey.
After my daughter was born, I decided to step back from day-to-day operations and took a year sabbatical with my family. But when I picked my capabilities back up and looked at that same boundary from before, it wasn’t where it had been.
Same person. Same limits. Different physics.
There are 117,060 American businesses clearing a million dollars a year with no employees, and almost all of them did it on hard mode. No AI, no leverage, limited tools, a decade or more of grinding. Hard mode might be over, but that doesn’t mean we’re entering into an “easy mode” era. The work is still yours.
I’m writing for the self-employed and self-curious: what the hard-mode cohort proved, what’s different now, and what the next few years look like for people building on their own, while sharing my learnings along the way.
That’s Modern Business. One email every two weeks, with the AI tools worth using, the news that matters, and what I’m learning as I build it.
The podcast lives at modernbusinesshq.com. That’s where owners tell how they did it, in their own words.
I don’t have this all figured out. I haven’t built a $1M+ independent business myself (at least not yet). But I know it’s the most interesting topic in business right now, and I’d rather see what I can do in the arena than watch from the sidelines!
Onwards and Upwards!
Why subscribe?
Business changed. The playbook hasn’t caught up. Every two weeks, I share what I find: the AI tools worth using, the news that matters, and what’s working as I build.
Join the crew
If you’re building something on your own, or thinking about it, you’re the person I’m writing for.
