Many different types of entrepreneurship are flourishing. In a partnership with The Harris Poll, Shopify found that business owners from all walks of life feel entrepreneurship is more financially secure than a traditional job.
That confidence in business ownership is borne out in other data as well. In 2025, a record 5.7 million new businesses opened, according to the US Census Bureau.
Entrepreneurial success can come in a variety of forms, whether you’re a solo shop owner or a founder scaling toward IPO. Here, learn about the different types of entrepreneurship, illustrated by real-world examples from Shopify merchants and founders.
10 types of entrepreneurship
- Scalable startup entrepreneurship
- Small-business entrepreneurship
- Large-company entrepreneurship
- Intrapreneurship
- Social entrepreneurship
- Imitator entrepreneurship
- Research entrepreneurship
- Hustler entrepreneurship
- Lifestyle entrepreneurship
- Green entrepreneurship
Explore these main types of entrepreneurship to inspire your next business venture:
1. Scalable startup entrepreneurship
With a scalable startup, a founder has an idea for a business venture, forms a company, and sets goals to scale rapidly. It’s how some household-name tech and consumer products companies, such as Uber, Airbnb, and Slack, began. Some scalable startups solicit venture capital based on the potential for this explosive growth.
Matt Scanlan, cofounder of cashmere brand Naadam, says his early discussions with venture capitalists focused on one core question. “We never talked about profitability in board meetings,” Matt says on an episode of the Shopify Masterspodcast. “It was, ‘How quickly can you grow?’”
Eventually, the discussion did move to profitability as Naadam grew and matured, he says, but those early startup days were focused solely on growth.
2. Small-business entrepreneurship
On the other end of the spectrum, some innovative entrepreneurs explicitly reject the hyper-growth startup model. Instead, they seek to run small businesses with modest operations, a lean staff, and steady, organic growth over time. Small-business entrepreneurs include ecommerce stores, Main Street–style independent shops such as local grocery stores and boutiques, and freelance writing and photography businesses.
On Shopify Masters, small-business owner Nicola Hamilton says her philosophy for her online store, Issues, is less about scaling rapidly and more about helping people access hard-to-find independent magazines. She has ambitious goals for the company's success, but they don’t include becoming a global brand.
“I still do want Issues to grow, but maybe not in the ways that a traditional business person might think about it,” Nicola says, adding that she rejected growing through franchising. “I'm scared of what that would look like if we handed the brand off to someone.”
3. Large-company entrepreneurship
When people use the word entrepreneurship, they’re often referring to founders and smaller companies, but entrepreneurship happens at large and well-established companies, too. The term large-company entrepreneurship refers to macro-level strategy—that is, applying an entrepreneurial mindset to how the company operates overall.
To stay relevant and protect their market share from disruptors, large companies must create new products, services, and innovative ideas that meet ever-changing consumer preferences. Large-company entrepreneurship strategies may include founding research and development or creative teams, entering new markets, or buying smaller startups.
Gymshark, for example, experienced rapid growth after launching in a garage in 2012, earning £41 million in sales during 2017 alone. They initially chose Adobe Commerce as their commerce platform. “It took six to eight months just to build the site,” Founder Ben Francis says in a Shopify case study. “By the time the site was finished, we had doubled in size and had already outgrown the site.”
As a new large-company entrepreneur, Ben had to pivot quickly to meet demand and chose Shopify Plus as the brand’s new ecommerce platform.
4. Intrapreneurship
Intrapreneurs are individuals who innovate within the framework of an existing business. They’re internal entrepreneurs, challenging the status quo in an established business through risk-taking, problem-solving, and adopting an entrepreneurial mindset. Their efforts may be part of a large-company entrepreneurship strategy, or they might apply their skills at a smaller company.
This shows you don’t necessarily need to start your own business to create something new. The key characteristics of an intrapreneur and a traditional founder-entrepreneur tend to overlap, Kelly Ling, former head of organizational effectiveness at DoorDash, tells Shopify.
“You’re driving culture change, you’re setting up new programs, you’re influencing, you’re meeting people, you’re identifying gaps throughout the organization,” Kelly says. “And then you’re finding ways to solve them.”
5. Social entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurs design their business models around specific missions, such as environmental issues or social justice concerns. The company may donate funds, volunteer time, contribute free products, or offer other benefits to charities or populations in need. The core mission influences management strategies and business success metrics.
Life is Good’s founders built the apparel company on the belief that "business for good is good for business,” Tom Hassell, president, says on Shopify Masters. The company donates 10% of its annual profit to its accredited nonprofit Life is Good Playmaker Project, which trains early childhood professionals to help children heal from trauma.
6. Imitator entrepreneurship
Imitator entrepreneurs take existing business models or products and improve or modify them. Instead of inventing a new concept, these entrepreneurs add their own twist to others’ business ideas by shaking up traditional processes or targeting underserved communities.
Enrico Casati and Jacopo Sebastio founded Velasca to sell handcrafted Italian leather shoes directly to consumers (DTC). They recognized an opportunity: Customers pay premium prices for these artisanal goods, largely due to the industry’s reliance on intermediaries such as distributors and independent retailers.
“We bet our company on being direct to consumer, which brings about a competitive advantage in terms of pricing,” Enrico says on Shopify Masters. “You make the same products from the same factories using the same materials as the famous brands. But you’re able to sell them at half the price of comparable products.”
Velasca disrupted more than the luxury shoe market. The company helped pioneer the DTC model in Europe, clearing a path for startups of all kinds.
7. Research entrepreneurship
A research entrepreneur collects information from sources such as scientific studies, academic research, customer experiences, and clinical trials. They use this information to identify a problem or gap in the market, then use it to develop a product or start a business.
One such entrepreneur is Bea Dixon, whose company The Honey Pot Co. sells all-natural feminine care products packed with herbs and backed by science. Bea herself experienced discomfort from bacterial vaginosis for months; she spent that time doing research, and she still struggled to find a solution. Now she has her own company that provides natural ways to soothe irritation, prevent infections, and manage menstruation.
8. Hustler entrepreneurship
Hustler entrepreneurs are self-reliant, independent, and driven self-starters. They may have a full-time job elsewhere, and they generally bootstrap the business using their own money. Hustler entrepreneurs tend to thrive in service-related businesses and in industries with low barriers to entry.
To make up for limited resources, they often rely on personality traits like determination, sales savvy, and the stamina for the hard work it takes to succeed. Sometimes it means getting scrappy and creative to source what you need. On Shopify Masters, Divy Ojha says he gave a friend rides in exchange for building the first website for his consumer produce delivery company, Odd Bunch.
In other cases, hustling means embracing a second job, says Their Jewelry Cofounder Lauren Ludwig. “If you need to work a nine-to-five job to pay the bills and then do this from 6 to 10 every night…don't let that stop you,” Lauren says on Shopify Masters. “Because one day you will get to the point where you don't have to work that nine-to-five job anymore, and you will see all of the success that you ever dreamed of.”
9. Lifestyle entrepreneurship
A lifestyle entrepreneur embodies the adage “Work to live, don’t live to work.” This type of founder builds their business around their life. Instead of focusing on rapid growth and scale, success means running a sustainable business that still allows for personal freedom, flexibility, balance, and general satisfaction with life.
Chandler Honey Founder Tique Chandler says on Shopify Masters, “The whole reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur in the first place is so that I could enjoy my life and enjoy taking a maternity leave—and enjoy balancing both things.”
Tique set up automated ecommerce systems, such as batched email sequences. If a person signed up for her newsletter, they automatically received an email with recipe suggestions that use honey. She also created diverse revenue streams, such as white-labeling products and subleasing part of her production space. These steps allowed her to work a highly flexible schedule when her baby arrived.
“I really enjoy my life,” Tique says. “I enjoy getting to go to the office on my own terms and not have anyone breathing down my neck or asking me to make spreadsheets.”
10. Green entrepreneurship
Green, eco-friendly entrepreneurs innovate with a mission to reduce environmental harm. There are many types of sustainable business models. Some green entrepreneurs create products with renewable or biodegradable materials. Others build replacement components, start repair programs to extend a product’s life cycle, or sell rental agreements to avoid using resources for new manufacturing.
Still others make shipments carbon-neutral by partnering with entities like Shopify Planet, which funds companies that remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Resale businesses such as vintage clothing shops are also examples of green entrepreneurship. And some companies reuse their packaging, or use packaging made with recycled materials.
Anaita Sarkar and Vik Davé founded their sustainable packaging brand, Hero Packaging, after they found their children playing in piles of plastic wrapping material left over from their previous business. “It made me feel sick,” Anaita says on Shopify Masters. “I knew we had to do something differently.”
The couple couldn’t find suitable sustainable products for packaging, so they experimented with their home compost bin and various plant-based materials. They eventually built 100% home-compostable shipping packages and created Hero Packaging. This move made them green entrepreneurs, and helped other businesses become greener, too.
Types of entrepreneurship FAQ
Are there different types of entrepreneurs?
There are many ways to classify entrepreneurs, based on their goals, the industries they pursue, and the scale of their companies. Entrepreneurs can be scrappy hustlers bootstrapping a side business, founders raising venture capital to scale quickly, and more.
What are the different types of entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship spans a wide range of approaches. Scalable startups chasing rapid growth, lifestyle businesses built around personal freedom and work-life balance, and new companies committed to social or environmental goals can all qualify.
How many types of entrepreneurs are there?
There’s no fixed number of entrepreneurial types. Categorizations typically group entrepreneurs by business type, size, and goals. Example types include: small business owners running lean operations, founders pursuing venture-backed growth, and shop owners funding charitable pursuits.
